


If One Should Fall

by warriorpoet



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Murder Plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 14:23:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 41,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2071641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/pseuds/warriorpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU from Confessions and Rabid Dog. Skyler is home when Jesse breaks in. And so begins an even more unlikely partnership as they try to negotiate an end game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There was a sound at the door far more violent than a knock.

Skyler had been waiting for this moment for months, now. Waiting with cold, hard stones of dread lodged in the pit of her stomach, the chambers of her heart, the lobes of her brain. Keeping her on edge. Keeping her alert. Waiting. Knowing it was coming. Knowing she had to be ready for it. The day when someone would come to their door to hurt them. Telling herself she was prepared.

She was bent over the sink in the bathroom, splashing water on her face, when she heard the banging. 

Already moving, her bare foot slipped on the carpet as she lunged for the baseball bat she kept under the bed. There was a sharp splintering of wood from the living room. She cracked her elbow on the bedside table and the bat slipped in her wet hands. She righted herself. Kept moving.

She tried to take it in all at once, putting the pieces together to read the situation to decide how she needed to act. Front door hanging open, the doorjamb in jagged shards. A plastic gas can, red as arterial blood, set on the floor. Puddles soaking into wood and fabric, the stink of gasoline wavering in the air.

Her daughter, standing up in her playpen like she knew she should be ready to run if only her legs had learned how to do it, face crumpled as she cried. 

The Pinkman kid, wearing a tortured tragedy mask that mirrored her child's. A rolled magazine fell from his hand as he dropped to his knees.

"No, no, no," he murmured, because he hadn't seen the baby, hadn't heard her under the sound of his own guttural screams, and this wasn't the plan, _goddamn it_ this wasn't supposed to happen like this. He reached for the little girl. "Holly, no, don't cry, don't – "

 _He knows her name_.

The thought shot through Skyler, shattering those stones of dread on the way. It made her weightless as she charged forward and swung the bat down, connecting with the soft tissue and bone of Jesse's shoulder.

"Don't touch her. Don't you dare touch her!"

With a wounded screech he rolled away from her, clutching the injury, digging his fingers in, making himself madder. "Cut it the fuck out, I'm not here to hurt you, okay?!"

"Then _why_ are you _here_?" she said, voice dark, pushed through clenched teeth. "Why are you pouring gasoline all over my living room?" She held the bat aloft, ready to bring it down on his skull if she had to. She was sure she was ready.

"He poisoned a little kid. Alright? He almost let a little kid die. Are you gonna let him get away with that?"

Skyler faltered, voice starting to waver, damp palms slipping her grip of the bat. "He's out of it. He's retired. He hasn't done _anything_."

"This was before! He did it to convince me to help him kill Gus Fring. You know he did that, right? You get it? He poisoned a little kid on the way to murdering someone. Get it?"

Jesse's voice pitched up with hysteria, Holly cried, and Skyler carefully inched her way across the floor to put herself between them.

"That doesn't make any sense..."

"It's a long fuckin' story, alright, and I ain't got time to explain it to you. Just take your baby and get out of here, Mrs. White. I don't wanna hurt you, but if you're helping him, if you're gonna get in my way..."

He trailed off. He had no words for the end of that sentence. Instead, he jammed the heels of his hands into his eyes, doubled over and screamed into the carpet.

"Shut up, Pinkman," She snapped. "Just shut up. You're scaring my daughter. Shut up."

Skyler backed up until she felt the edge of the playpen bump against the back of her calves. She crouched down, tried to comfort Holly without taking her eyes off Jesse or dropping the bat.

Slowly, he unfurled, his teeth grit as he inhaled deeply and his eyes rolled toward the ceiling. 

Skyler's head throbbed, the stink of gasoline and the bitter taste of adrenaline stuck in her throat. Blindly, she reached out, fingers grazing Holly's hair, trying to soothe her even as the tips of her fingers trembled.

Jesse reached into his pocket and Skyler was moving again. She sprung forward before she was able to register and process the gun in his hand, recognizing the shape of the barrel as she struck him with the bat and then her shoulder. She pinned him to the floor, tried to beat the small pistol out of his white-knuckled fingers.

Something in him, whatever part of him that was raised right enough to offer to help set the table for dinner and make polite small talk and compliment Skyler's green beans, whatever part of him it was that was told to never hit a woman, that part of him held him back as they struggled. 

The bat was cumbersome, useless at close contact. Skyler sent it sliding across the floor where it disappeared under the couch, out of reach. 

"Bitch, get _off_ me," Jesse snarled. That well-raised part of him lost as he shoved her, slammed her back against the edge of the coffee table, tried to roll her, get on top of her. He needed both hands to do it, was suddenly electrified with fear of what he might have to do. He tossed the gun, just out of reach for both of them.

Skyler got a hard knee into his balls as he got on top of her. He groaned, backed off enough for her to retreat on shaking legs, to find the gun with shaking hands. Jesse howled, coughed, spat a venomous "Motherfucking _cunt_ ," into the gas-soaked rug.

"Get out of my house," Skyler said, level and low. She raised the gun to him. "Get out now."

Jesse righted himself, leaned back and stared up at her. He choked out a dry, bitter laugh. "Or what, you're gonna shoot me? In your house? In front of your kid? Walt's gonna come home and find that?"

Skyler couldn't help darting a look toward Holly, a sob bubbling from her chest, catching in her throat.

"Your asshole husband poisoned an eight-year-old boy for no reason," Jesse rasped. "A kid I really care about. Just as a move. To convince me that Gus Fring did it and to get me back on his side. Okay? Imagine if he'd done something like that to your little girl to win you over. To make you wanna kill someone. Huh?"

"Stop."

"She's in a hospital bed with breathing tubes in her and he's looking you in the eye and swearing he didn't do it—"

"Shut up."

"—all while he says he's gonna help you get the guy he tells you did it. The guy _he_ wants to kill, the guy who's got nothing against you anymore. Imagine that. Wouldn't you wanna burn him to the ground?"

"Get out. Just leave now, and he doesn't have to know you were here."

Jesse didn't hear her. "I had him. I had him where you've got me right now. Gun to his head. Right over there." He lifted his arm with a wince, gestured limply toward the dining area. He sniffed, swiping the hand across his nose. "I fucking had him."

Skyler felt sick. It was the tension. It was the fumes. It was Holly's crying. She had to get Holly out of there. She had to get _Pinkman_ out of there.

_Then what? What if he comes back?_

Jesse held a gun to Walt's head in their dining room. Skyler held a gun to Jesse's head in their living room.

_What the fuck happened to my life?_

Jesse kept rambling, his voice thick with tears. "He made me think it was ricin. That Gus got hold of this ricin I was s'posed to use to kill him, and used it to poison Brock. That's his name, the little boy Mr. White almost killed. Brock."

Skyler wasn't even sure she knew how to use the goddamn gun if she had to.

"Turned out, though, that he did it. I knew it. I knew it was him, but I believed him when he said it wasn't. I'm fucking stupid, I _believed_ him. Wasn't even the ricin. It was this plant shit. Lily of the valley."

"What?" The gun was so small, but suddenly felt so heavy in her hands.

"Lily of the valley. It's this plant, the berries are poison or something. I don't know how he did it, but he _did_. He fucking worked me the whole time." Jesse pulled himself back to the present, looked dead-on into Skyler's eyes. Blue on blue. Narrow on wide. He laughed again, that hollow, dusty sound. "C'mon, Mrs. White. I know you can get mad. Get mad about this."

Skyler's hand dropped to her side. She fumbled the gun, but held on. The pain of the struggle kicked in, the pain in her back, her knees, her arms, insistently present. Everything hurt. "He's alive? This little boy – Brock – is he okay?"

"Yeah. He is now. Barely."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. She set the gun down and turned to pick up Holly, trying to comfort her, trying to get her away from the fumes.

"So, what, you believe me now?" Jesse crackled back to incredulous life. 

"You should come with me," Skyler said quickly, too fast to change her mind. "We'll figure something out. Just... please, just don't do anything to the house. Don't punish my kids for whatever Walt's done. My children have done nothing to deserve what you came here to do."

"He'll know," Jesse said as he climbed to his feet. His frantic urgency had sparked up, but burned duller, drained of its violence. "He's gonna know... he's gonna figure it out, where I am. Does he know you're here? That you're home? Shit, if he knows – "

"No. He doesn't. Unless he goes to the car wash, he's not going to know I left early."

"How're you gonna explain your front door being trashed? Huh? He's gonna know I was here, if nothing else..." His eyes drifted to the gas can, the glistening puddles across the couch, the soaked patches of carpet. "He's gonna be coming here – he's gonna figure it out – "

Skyler looked to the door, the ragged wood of the frame. Stroked a hand through Holly's hair. "Do what you were going to do," she said flatly.

Jesse shook his head, confused. "You mean... light it?"

"No. _No_. Jesus! Finish dumping the gas – _no ignition_. Leave him a situation to deal with. He's not going to want me to find out. It'll buy time."

"What? Seriously?"

She bundled up Holly, darted back down to the bedroom, grabbing what she needed. Jesse was still standing, hunched, stiffly frozen, as she passed him again.

"Do it," she insisted. "Hurry. Then come with me."

She disappeared through the broken door and Jesse surveyed the room before slowly picking up the gas can again. He sloshed it over the couch, across the carpet, moving sluggishly, the flight gone out of him. He picked up the gun where Mrs. White had left it, absently rubbed his thumb over the lighter in his pocket.

Outside, Skyler surveyed the garish white Cadillac with the LWYRUP plates parked haphazardly across the driveway, the alarm of the open door pinging insistently. She turned away and gulped at the fresh air. Holly snuffled in her arms, and Skyler bounced her and whispered soothing nonsense into her hair.

She watched the windows of the house, expected to see flame start licking at the curtain any second now. It could even turn out to be a good thing, she supposed, a good reason to leave town and wait things out. Even better if Pinkman went up in flames with it. Then Hank and Marie wouldn't think that she and Walt burned the house down, it wouldn't give Hank something to pass on to the police that had nothing to do with the drugs, it couldn't be some back-door way to get Walt without implicating himself.

Or would it? Would Hank think Walt was capable of burning his own house down with Jesse Pinkman inside? _Was_ Walt capable of something like that?

Skyler took a deep breath, and settled Holly into the car seat. There was no good thing in any of this.

Jesse walked stiffly down the driveway, favouring his fresh injuries. He winced as he stopped to grab his bag from the car and Skyler smirked in spite of herself, even as her own back ached when she slid behind the wheel. At least she'd been able to get a few knocks into him.

He slammed the passenger door and she started the car and pulled away from the curb.

"So, what now? You turning me in to the cops? Your brother-in-law? You know he knows who Mr. White is, right?

"Yeah," Skyler answered dryly. "I know."

"He tried to get me to talk. Woulda thought he'd go to you first. Y'know, you being family and him almost beating me to death and all."

"He did."

"And yet, you ain't talking to him. I woulda thought you'd be all over that. I thought you hated Mr. White. He said you were just sitting around, waiting for him to die."

Skyler sighed, and glanced over her shoulder at Holly in the car seat. "Jesse, have you heard of a thing called mutually assured destruction?"

"Yeah. Maybe. I dunno. What do you mean?"

"It means I'm in it too. I've been laundering Walt's money and keeping his secrets. If this comes out, I'll be in a lot of trouble too. If this comes out, my kids find out. I don't want that. More than anything, I don't want that."

"Yeah. I get it. Guess I'm the same thing. Except I've stopped giving a shit."

Molten anger still boiled deep in the rumble of his voice, under the defeated droop of his eyelids.

The blinker ticked as Skyler turned toward downtown.

"So what happens now?" he repeated.

"Walt's dying. His cancer is back. Did you know that?"

Jesse was silent for a long moment. He shifted in his seat. "No. I didn't."

"We can wait this out. He's out now. He's done. This all dies with him."

"So, what? You're just gonna let him get away with it? Did you not hear what I said back there? He put a kid in the hospital, almost killed him, as a move. Like, as strategy. To save _your_ asses."

"I know, I heard you – "

"Oh, and, hey, you know what else? We were out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere on this job, and this psycho asshole working with us shoots a kid. The kid saw us, but he didn't know what he saw, and just, bam, like it's nothing, this asshole shoots him. And you know what Mr. White did?"

Skyler bit the inside of her cheek. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel.

"Nothing. He did fucking nothing. Barely just a slap on the wrist, like, 'Hey man, try not to go murdering any kids next time, now let's go get rid of the body!'. Then I quit the business 'cause of it, and Mr. White keeps working with this prick."

Skyler inhaled shakily and reached out to adjust the air vents. The blast of cold air was a welcome slap to her face.

Jesse leaned closer to her, getting up in her face, watching how fast she started to blink. She swallowed hard, tried to keep her eyes on the road. 

"You wanna protect kids?" he growled. "Your kids ain't the only ones who need it."

She nodded silently and emphatically, and when she finally spoke her voice was hard with resolve. "I'm going to take you to a hotel. You can... calm down a little, maybe, and then we can have a thorough, rational conversation about what... what our best course of action is here."

Jesse slumped back against the passenger door. "Rational," he scoffed. "Yeah. Sure. Like when you figure out the rational thing is to bring Mr. White over for a friendly visit so he can shoot me in the face. That's rational for you, right?"

"And I suppose kicking my door down and pouring gasoline all over my house is your idea of a rational response," Skyler shot back, throwing a furious glare in his direction.

"Yeah. Exactly. All the more reason to cap my ass, right?"

"If you can trust me not to do that, then I'll trust you not to skip out on the hotel and come after us again."

Jesse was quiet a beat, until the words seemed to leak out of him, thick with hate. "It's just him I want."

"And he's the one who'll be trying to get to you before you can." She glanced over at him again, softer this time, his head on the window and fingers splayed over his eyes.

"Mutually assured destruction," he mumbled.

"Exactly. So, do we have a deal?"

"I guess. What other fuckin' choice is there?"

"Answer me. I need to hear you say it."

He sighed wearily, and when she looked over again, he was staring back. "I promise I won't do anything to you or your kids. Alright? That's gonna have to be good enough for now, Mrs. White."

"I suppose it will," Skyler answered.

_What other fucking choice is there?_

*

Skyler's phone trilled from her purse as they navigated the hotel hallway.

"Damn," she muttered, attempting to balance Holly's carrier and open her bag. "It's probably Walt."

Jesse stood aside and watched her fumble. "Do you... do you need a hand or something? I could... hold her, or – "

"No," she said, almost shouted. She tried to take the bite out of it. "Thank you, but no. Go on ahead." She set Holly's carrier down and crouched beside it. She took a deep breath, stared into the geometric swirls of hotel hallway carpet, and answered the call, "Hey Walt, what's up?" She cringed at her own voice, forcibly breezy, too light even under normal circumstances.

"Skyler." Walt didn't seem to notice, his relief audible in the short burst of her name. "Where are you? Mariano told me you left early – "

"Yeah, I just had to get away, you know? To not be there for a while. With everything that's been going on, I just... I needed a time out. Benefits of being the boss, right?"

"Where are you?" Walt asked.

Jesse found his room. He slid the keycard in, the lock blinked green and whirred, he pushed the door open. Skyler was now pacing circles around her sleeping daughter, an arm pressed across her chest and a smile pasted on her face.

"Oh, I've just been driving around with Holly. We ended up in Old Town, doing some window shopping and people watching. Trying not to think too much," she laughed half heartedly. 

Jesse caught her eye and tilted his head toward the open room. She nodded, picked up Holly and started to follow as Walt said in her ear, "So you haven't stopped by the house?"

"Nope. Can't say that I have. Why? What's up?"

"It's just the damndest thing. I meant to take some prescriptions to get refilled, and I could've sworn I had them on me, but – I was hoping you might've been home and seen them on the kitchen counter. I was so sure I picked them up from there, but – anyway. I'm at the pharmacy now, way across town, so there's no point going all the way home just to check, and – never mind. It's fine. I'll just call Delcavoli's office and have them call it in to the pharmacy."

Jesse closed the door quietly and watched as she set Holly down, pressing a hand to her forehead and setting her mouth in a firm line at whatever Mr. White was saying. She caught him staring and he turned away, started to restlessly pace the expanse of the hotel room.

Skyler fought to keep her voice level. "Okay," she said, and wondered why Walt still bothered with bullshit lies when they were this deep in it. "That's one problem solved."

"Yeah," Walt said, suddenly distracted. "Well, anyway, have a good afternoon. Take as much time as you need."

Jesse opened the minibar and blindly surveyed the selection. He palmed a couple of miniatures, broke the seal on one and tipped it back. 

Skyler rolled her eyes. "Yup," she said to Walt. "See you tonight."

Jesse tossed the empty in the trash can and tapped the other in jittery syncopation against his leg as he stared into a photograph on the wall. Somewhere in the desert, a rocky outcrop jutting into a cloud dotted sky, rendered in stark black and white. It looked kind of familiar, but he couldn't really place it. Everywhere in the desert looked familiar by now.

"Walt's trying to cover it up, so my guess is he's going to be busy for a while." Skyler closed the phone and tossed it back in her bag. Checked on Holly, thankfully still asleep, cried herself exhausted.

Jesse tore his eyes away from the photograph. "Yo, this place is swank. You coulda just stuck me in some fleabag joint, but you go all high end on me."

He turned to Skyler and tried to smile. His teeth felt too big for his mouth, his cheeks felt numb. Something pooled at the back of his throat, gasoline and hate and snot and bile that he couldn't cough up or swallow.

She watched him closely, still careful to position herself between him and Holly.

"All the more incentive for you to stay, I suppose."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so." He cracked the seal on the second bottle and took a swig. "I, uh, I have cash on me, so..." He gestured to the duffle bag that was supposed to buy his disappearance. "I can, you know, cover the bill and all."

"I have money."

Jesse laughed, strangled and bitter. "Yeah. No shit you do." He sat down in an armchair and shifted, winced, pain flitting across his face.

"I'll get you some ice," Skyler said.

He looked down at the bottle in his hand. "Nah, thanks, drinking it straight's fine."

"I meant for your..." she gestured vaguely towards his midsection."Injury."

"Oh. Y'mean where you kicked me in the balls?"

Skyler glared. "Yeah. Where I kicked you in the balls. Oh, and what did you use to break my door open? Shoulder? Foot? Might want to put some ice on that too."

He shook his head at her. "What made you believe me? I know I've gotta be, like, one of your least favourite people on the planet, so why listen to anything I have to say?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and sat down across from him on the edge of the bed. "Lily of the valley. It was in our back yard. I noticed that it was gone, around that time. When Gus Fring died." 

It sounded so passive, phrased like that. As though he'd suddenly keeled over behind the counter at Los Pollos Hermanos or passed away peacefully in his sleep after a long illness. Not in an explosive shockwave and a fireball, half his face burned away. Hank had talked about it over dinner one night, the crime scene, the autopsy photos, Junior enraptured and Walt expressionless. 

Now, Skyler closed her eyes and corrected herself, slowly and deliberately. "When – when Walt murdered Gus Fring."

"Did you say anything about it to him?"

"He noticed me looking at where it had been and fed me some line about getting rid of it because it was toxic and it would be dangerous when Holly started walking. I didn't – I knew he'd had something to do with the bomb at the nursing home, and I was too afraid to keep asking questions. I didn't want to know any more." She twisted her hands in her lap, smiled tightly. "The lily was a mother's day gift from my son."

Jesse finished the rest of his miniature. He caught his tongue between his teeth and bit down until he could taste the coppery tang of blood. "So what do we do now?" he croaked.

Skyler stood and smoothed steady hands over her thighs. "I'll go get you that ice," she said. She picked up the baby carrier and slid the key card off the end table in one fluid motion, and turned the handle of the door so that it locked quietly behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please bear with me while I steal a big chunk of dialogue from Rabid Dog for this chapter.

The blank, black screen of the television turned Jesse into nothing more than a smudge. A copy of a copy, worn away, faded to an afterthought.

He stared at his vague reflection and listened to the ringing in his ears. His whole body hurt, his brain screamed inside his skull. He didn't want to move. He was afraid of what he might do if his body took over, if rage took the wheel again and drove him on instinct.

The cheerful electronic ringtone of the Hello Kitty phone sounded from the desk. He got up, slowly, noticed it was dark out, another smudge of himself imprinted on the window over streetlights and shadows. 

He approached the phone warily, like it was a bomb waiting to go off. He didn't need to hear another message from Mr. White. Wanting to _talk_ , wanting to _fix it_ , like that was even possible. Hearing it from his wife was bad enough. At least she wasn't the one who actually did the things that couldn't be fixed.

Jesse exhaled when the mouthless cat showed him the number of the new burner Mrs. White had texted him not long after she'd left.

"Yeah?"

"Are you looking at the parking lot?"

"No. Why? You out there?" He moved to the window and looked past the black void of his eyes to the asphalt below, looking for Mrs. White.

"I'm in a room two floors above you. Walt suggested we go to a hotel, I suggested we go here." Glass clinked on glass, and Skyler paused to swallow deeply. "Do you see Saul's car out there?"

Jesse spotted the white Caddy gleaming in the dark and wrenched himself back behind the curtain. He scrambled for the bedside lamp, killing the only light in the room. "Jesus. What, are you trying to get him to fucking see me?"

"Walt's in there with him."

"And what the hell's up with you bringing him right here?" Jesse spat as he stalked back to the window, his heart thumping, giving the ringing in his ears a beat to play to. "How d'you expect me to not wanna get the fuck out of here when you've got him two seconds away?"

"I see you've managed to calm down," Skyler said, thick and cynical. "It's equally likely you could find us and do whatever the hell you want. But we trust each other, don’t we?"

Jesse huffed a mirthless laugh. "Yeah. Sure."

"I was right. He is covering for you. Fixed the door, cleaned up as much as he could. Told me a fantastical tale about a pump malfunction at the gas station to explain the rest of the smell."

"He's gotta be looking for me. Saul knows why I went after him. That piece of shit will help him do anything for the right price."

"I'll find out as much as I can." Skyler sipped from her glass of vodka again, tempted to just drink straight from the bottle like Jesse had earlier. She watched the car, could see Walt's head silhouetted in the back seat.

"We gotta figure this out fast. I can't stay here forever. And – shit – I gotta stop using this burner. Saul gave it to me, he might be tracking it or something."

"I'll come to your room tomorrow. We'll talk then." She held the glass against her chest and saw Walt emerge from the back of the car and start walking back toward the hotel, shoulders hunched, ice bucket swinging in his hand. "He's coming back. I have to go. Get some sleep, clear your head."

Jesse snorted again. "Yeah. Clear it by Mr. White putting bullet through my fucking skull."

"Jesse," Skyler said firmly. "Cut the crap and trust me. You need to trust me. This isn't going to get solved for either of us if you don't."

"Whatever," he muttered, and killed the line.

"Mouthy little shit," Skyler muttered, and snapped the phone closed. 

From their separate windows, one light, one dark, they watched Walter move through the parking lot until their sightlines were swallowed up by the entryway awning.

Skyler turned away to switch the phone off and hide it securely in the lining of her suitcase. God forbid Walt should catch her with a second cellphone and bring this whole thing full circle.

She downed the rest of her glass and leaned over the edge of the crib to check on Holly, sleeping peacefully like nothing had ever been wrong in her small world.

"It was a big day, huh sweetie?" Skyler murmured, stroking a finger along her hair. "I wish I could go to sleep, too."

*

So did Jesse.

He paced in the dark. Exhausted, but his synapses firing through the fog, unable to sleep.

He looked out the window. Saul's car was gone. Maybe he could just go out real quick, find somewhere to score some benzos, get back before anyone could see him, and knock himself into oblivion. Or, as Mrs. White kept putting it, calm down.

They'd be watching. Saul's dudes. Huell had pickpocketed him twice now, without him noticing until it was way too late. The big bastard was sneaky. He'd be watching.

Jesse pulled Saul's gun from the pocket of his hoodie and slumped down against the wall facing the door. Deadbolted. Latched. Heavy end table in front. 

He set the gun on his knee and waited. Just in case. Just until he could fall asleep. Just until he could think of a way out of this.

A synapse fired, exploded, threw up the words, _You never learned to think_ , in the sound of Mr. White's voice.

"Shut the fuck _up_ ," Jesse droned to the empty room. He crawled his way to the minibar and cracked open another bottle.

*

Skyler sat with her feet tucked under her, the pads of her fingers pressed tight against her third glass of vodka. She called Walt on his bullshit. Then she waited. For some kind of explanation. She'd always be waiting.

"Jesse Pinkman. Remember?" Walt said. "He came over to our house that time for dinner? Remember?"

She gave him the slightest nod of acknowledgement, betraying nothing.

"Well, he... he got upset over this... something he thinks I did." Walt paused, and for the briefest of moments, Skyler thought that maybe this was all a misunderstanding. Maybe she could give Pinkman a handful of bills and tell him something that made sense, send him on his way, out of their lives for good. One problem solved. 

Then Walt added, almost as an afterthought, "I did do it. But I did it for very good reasons. And it's just – it's complicated."

Skyler's lips parted, moved without sound. _Good reasons_. "Wait... are you – " She caught herself, channelling the sick twist of her stomach into the acid of anger rising in her chest. "Are you telling me he tried to... burn our house down?"

"That was probably, for a brief moment, his intention. But, obviously, he changed his mind."

The breeze of Walt's voice made Skyler's breath catch. Like a teenager who'd borrowed his parents' car, elaborately apologising for the tiniest scratch on the paint when the vehicle lay overturned and shattered on the side of the highway, burned to an unrecognizable lump of steel.

She forced air in to her chest. She had a purpose here. "And how does that work, him – him changing his mind? What exactly are we dealing with, with this person?"

Walt sighed, and sat across from her. "Look, you've got to understand that with Jesse there are emotional issues. Personal issues. Some drug abuse. But he has always been more of a danger to himself than anyone else. He has a tendency to fly off the handle, that's all."

The bruises on her back throbbed, the raised platforms of the headboard still digging in to her tender skin despite the pillow propped behind her. "So, he has never hurt anybody?" she asked, testing him.

He stared her down, oozing false sincerity from his pores. "No," he answered firmly.

Failed.

And Walt knew it, too, getting up, walking away to Holly's crib, diverting the conversation.

Skyler took a drink, her mouth dry and burning. "So, what's your course of action here?" 

"Saul's guy, Kuby, tracks him down, which shouldn't take long – "

"How?" Skyler interrupted. "How do you try to find someone like this, who – by your account – who's abusing drugs and emotionally unstable? How do we know he's not just waiting to do something even more drastic? Where do you begin to look for a person like this?"

Walt raised his arms to the ceiling, dropped them in frustration at her questions. "Places. His house. His parents' house. Places he's familiar with. Comfortable with. Whatever he's doing, he's acting alone, Skyler, his circle of associates is incredibly small, and they're likely even less of a danger to anyone than Jesse is. He's going to turn up eventually. Soon. Saul's guy will find him soon. And when he does, I'm gonna... I'm gonna talk to him. Make him see reason." 

He turned his attention back to Holly. Skyler pressed at his edges a little harder. "Talk to him. Make him see reason," she repeated quietly. "So I'm clear... these are just euphemisms you're using here, right?"

Walt turned to her, stunned, as though she had been the one doling out terrifying truths all day. "No. What? What are you – what does that mean?"

She was incensed. She remembered crash of the door splintering open, the smell of the fuel, the weight of the gun and the rage in Jesse's eyes. What he'd said: _Get mad about this._

"I knew this was going to happen. I knew it. I told you that someday, someone was going to come to our door and try to hurt us. And now, here we are."

"Jesse didn't go there to hurt anyone."

"He poured gasoline all over our house, Walt. He tried to set our house on fire! I mean... Jesus, _you_ brought this person into our lives, _you_ invited him in. And now what? What happened? Why has he done this?"

"He changed his mind. He didn't do it, did he?"

"What if he changes it back?!" Skyler snapped. She drank, tried to breathe. 

"Skyler – "

"If he is what you claim he is – if he's this emotionally disturbed person –" 

"I never said disturbed."

She started again, more insistent. "If he's this emotionally _disturbed_ person incapable of hurting anyone – then what is that you did to drive him to this? To break into our house and try to burn it down?"

"Are you blaming _me_ for this?"

"You seem to be making a lot of fucking excuses for him. You said he's upset about something you did. So who else is there, Walt?"

Holly stirred from the crib, a small cry breaking the silence. Walt gave Skyler a warning glare and sat across from her again. 

"Like I said," he began. Soothing, smooth. She hated him. "There's a good explanation for what Jesse is upset about. He overreacts. He can be very emotional. He doesn't... he just doesn't use his _head_. He changed his mind, and once he's moved on, put some distance between himself and that moment of overreaction, he'll be able to see reason. Once I explain the situation to him, things will settle down. Everything is going to be fine. As I said, I'm simply being overly cautious by bringing us here."

He reached out and ran a reassuring hand down her arm. Grasped her wrist. She broke away to drain her drink and set it heavily down on the end table.

"We don't need this, Walt. I mean, my God. Where we are now, with Hank and Marie, and that awful tape we made. We don't need this." She swung her feet off the bed and the room swung with her as she stood. Walt reached for her again, and she shrugged him off. "This needs to be fixed," she said, her jaw set, her nails biting into her palms.

"Skyler, it will be. I will take care of this."

She closed the bathroom door on him and wrenched the faucet open. Water hammered on ceramic as she sat on the edge of the tub and pressed her hands against her eyes until the tub began to overflow, sodden warmth seeping down the backs of her legs and pooling at her bare feet. 

*

Jesse was woken by his heart in his throat and his blurry hand jerking towards the gun on the bed beside him, just inches from his face. He stumbled to the door and squinted through the peephole.

Mrs. White, a cardboard coffee tray and paper bag in her hands.

Jesse pulled the end table away from the door, fumbled on the latch and the lock, the index finger of his right hand steady alongside the trigger. 

He cracked the door and waved her in. 

"Morning," she said brusquely. "I brought breakfast. There's muffins and coffee. I wasn't sure what you'd like, but it's better than nothing."

"Nah, thanks. I'm, uh... I'm not hungry. But thanks."

"Suit yourself." Skyler set the food down and turned to him. She froze. "Do you think you could lose the gun?"

"Huh?" Jesse slowly looked at his hand. He blinked, at the gun, like it was an unfamiliar object. Not this particular object, but the very concept of the gun itself. "Yeah. Yeah. Sorry."

He set it on the end table, still askew beside the door. He eyed the tall cups of coffee suspiciously.

Skyler leaned against the desk with a sigh. She raised her right hand. "There's nothing in it, I swear. I'll even let you have first pick."

Jesse's hand hovered over the cup closest to him before his fingers grazed the lid of the cup by Skyler, then jerked back to the first one. He picked it up, lifted the lid and sniffed. He shrugged, sipped. He almost didn't give a shit anymore.

Skyler shook her head in disbelief. "So, anyway, from what I was able to get out of Walt last night, he just wants to talk to you. To explain things. He says he has good reasons for what he did. He didn't tell me any details. Just that there was an explanation."

Jesse snorted. The bitter coffee filtered into his system, clearing the fog, resurrecting bitter blood. "Good reasons for putting a kid in the hospital," he said thickly. "Yeah. Totally eager to have a heart to heart with him on that. Sure that's gonna end well."

"I honestly don't think he wants to kill you."

"Yeah, well, no offense, Mrs. White, but he kept all this criminal shit from you for how long? And how much is there that you've got no idea about? Until yesterday, you had no idea he'd been hurting kids. So excuse me if I'm not totally confident you're able to get a good read on him when it comes to who he does or doesn't wanna kill."

He pulled the pack of Wilmingtons from his pocket, starting to run low. He shook one out, clamped it between his teeth and sparked up the lighter.

"This is a non-smoking room," Skyler said flatly.

"So I'll pay the fucking cleaning charge. Whatever."

Jesse made a show of dragging the armchair closer to the window, opening the window as much as it would go, a thin sliver at the top of the frame. He climbed on the chair and blew smoke out into the fresh air.

Skyler sighed, and turned to rummage through her purse for her own pack. She lit up at the other side of the window, staying on the floor and angling her head up towards Jesse, towards the crack in the window. 

He looked down at her with surprise, open curiosity.

She shrugged. "If you can't beat 'em..."

"Is that why you're still with Mr. White? Still covering for him? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?"

Skyler tapped her thumb on the end of the filter before she inhaled. She ignored the question, idly hoping that there was enough gasoline residue on Jesse's clothes for him to suddenly self-immolate. "Walt told me he called you. Left you a message. He wants to arrange a meeting. Did you get it?"

"I broke that burner down." He gestured to the desk, the open pink and white plastic casing, battery discarded on the blotter. "I shoulda quit using it sooner. But I guess if Saul had a lead on me being here already, I wouldn't be here anymore."

"Walt wants to meet you in a public place. It'll be safe. For both of you. You can hear him out. Maybe... maybe hearing what he has to say could change your mind."

Jesse exhaled, the rough shake of his head disrupting the cloud of smoke around him. "Have you told him you know where I am? Is he sending you to sell this to me? To, like, mediate? Like I'm supposed to believe this shit because it's you saying it, not him?"

"No. Walt doesn't know anything. He's gone to work at the car wash as normal. I said I'd take care of the house. Go in and air it out, get a cleaner, then I'd be in later. He doesn't know anything."

Jesse bit his lip. He looked down at the parking lot, scanning for familiar cars. "Where's your baby?"

"With Walt."

"What?" He was equal parts frustration and incredulity. "How the hell can you leave your kid alone with that asshole after everything I told you?"

Skyler looked up at him and shook her head. "Jesse – "

"Why won't you fucking _listen_ to me?"

"Holly is his _child_. He wouldn't do anything to hurt her. God knows she's safer with him than she is _here_ , with the man who came close to dousing her in gasoline."

"Oh, yeah, and her mother who pulled a gun on someone in front of her."

"That was self-defence."

"So was what I did."

"Oh, my God." Skyler's jaw tightened. "Walt wouldn't do anything to hurt her," she repeated, dragging on her cigarette like it was a lifeline to sanity. "Besides, he's only taking her to our sitter. We figured that since you don't know where our sitter is, that she'd be safe there." Her eyes widened in sarcastic curiosity. "You... you _are_ missing that piece of information, aren’t you?"

Jesse banged the window and jumped down from the chair. Skyler took a step back. The cherry of his cigarette danced in front of her as he gestured emphatically, mocking her, ready to ignite them both. 

"You know that Gus threatened to kill all of you, right? That he took Mr. White out in the desert with a bag on his head, said he was gonna kill you and your son. And your baby. That's why Mr. White poisoned Brock, to fuck with my head, to get me to get him to Gus. He did it 'cause he'd already almost got you and your kids killed. So don't be tellin' me he's not gonna do anything to hurt your kids, 'cause he's already done it."

"And how do I know you're not fucking with my head right now?" Skyler said quietly.

"Jesus Christ! You just said he basically admitted what he did. He didn't tell you, but he admitted to _what I told you he did_."

"Have you ever killed anybody, Jesse?"

The turn in the conversation made his head spin and ache. "What?"

"Have you ever hurt anybody? The things you say Walt did – you say he needed you to help him. So have you helped him hurt people? Have you killed people?"

Skyler stared at him, waiting. Jesse took a final drag on his cigarette and ground it out on the windowsill. 

"Yeah," he said with an exhale of smoke. "I have."

"Walt told me that you had never hurt anybody."

"So he's a fucking liar. Big surprise. There's my point proved."

Skyler sighed. She sat down on the bed, smoothed ash away where it dropped on the covers. " _My_ point is, that the reluctance to retaliate with violence that I saw – reluctance that I tried to fight him on – makes me think that all Walt really wants to do is talk to you. You've done things as bad as he has, and I'm sure you think you had your reasons for those as well. Things that seem like perfectly acceptable reasons that you would want to explain in order to defend yourself."

Jesse started to protest, and Skyler held up a silencing hand.

"I know, Jesse, because I'm in the same position. I've done terrible things that I've tried to justify with what seem like completely defensible explanations to me. And I'm not happy about any of this, _believe_ me. Not what you've told me about Walt, and not what you came to our house to do. But there are bigger concerns here. My brother-in-law. How close he might be to having evidence on Walt. On _all of us_."

He looked away, grinding his teeth. Ripping his own argument apart between his bones until his whole face hurt. 

Skyler crossed the room, stubbed out her cigarette, and took a long sip of tepid coffee, waiting to see if Jesse would say anything. If he would even look at her. 

"This is the easiest solution. Meet him somewhere public. Somewhere safe. Talk to him. Hear him out. Maybe he'll tell you something that's enough... enough for you to let this go. Put it behind you and just... leave town."

The tendons in his neck stood out as he whipped his head around and locked on to her with narrowed eyes. "Did he tell you to say that?"

"Jesus, how many times to I have to tell you – "

"He _suggested_ I get out of town, and I was on my way when I figured it out. What he'd done. And it was something I was so not able to just _let go_ that I blew that chance. I had to make a detour. Got it? I couldn't just _walk away_ from that because I couldn't let him _get away_ with this shit anymore. And nothing he has to say is gonna change that. It ain't that easy to get rid of me."

"Nobody else needs to get hurt. And this is the only way that can happen."

"Nobody gets hurt. Right. 'Cause there's no way he could get, like, a fucking sniper or a driveby or something to take me out. Sure." He shook his head. "Look, are you gonna help me or not? If you ain't, then get the fuck out. And stay out of my way. I'll do what I can to keep you and your kids out of it."

"You'll _do what you can_? Because burning our house down or hurting their father is going to have no effect on them whatsoever?"

Jesse groaned, a frustrated snarl deep in his throat. He ran a hand over his hair, banged his fist against the wall. 

"What is it you want out of this, exactly?" she asked.

"I want him to know that he can't do all this and just keep walking through it, like he's invincible, like none of it can ever affect him. I want him to suffer. I want him to _lose something_."

The way he looked at Skyler made those last words hang in the air like a guillotine poised over her neck. 

She calmly picked up her coffee and her purse. "I don't see any way to us agreeing on a solution, here," she said, and made for the door, walking with purpose.

Jesse could practically see her on the other side of that door, raising her phone to her ear, waiting for Mr. White to pick up. He tracked her, desperately watching her go, until he caught sight of the gun on the end table. Its dull glint kicked up a drunken, sleepless half-thought from the night before.

"He's dying, right?" he said quickly. "The cancer's back? You said that. Were you telling the truth?"

"Yes." Skyler stopped, turned back to him.

"How long's he got?"

She sighed. "I don't know. He's going through another round of chemo... it's... months, maybe. Probably no more than a year. It's... it's not so long that it can't be waited out. You could leave town. I could get in touch with you near the end. Maybe... maybe you could come back, see him die. If that's... if that's all you want. To see Walt suffering. You can have that."

Jesse chewed his lip. He held Skyler's gaze, a bitter smile suddenly twisting his mouth. "Or how 'bout I stay put and we do something to speed that process up?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: contains discussion of methods of (faked) suicide.

"Speed the process up?" Skyler repeated. "If that's your only solution, why are you even bothering to try to work with me here? You could've come to our room last night, shot him while he was sleeping next to me. God, you could've gone straight after him instead of trying to burn our house down. _That's_ your only solution?"

"I'm talking natural causes. Making it _look_ like natural causes. Something where as far as anyone knows, cancer got him a little quicker than the doctors hoped. Oh well. Shit happens." Jesse took a step closer to her, the twist of his mouth becoming a crazed smile. "But he knows. He knows it was me. It was _us_. That he didn't get out of this shit just by dying."

"And how does that happen?"

"Ricin. He came up with it himself. He wanted to use it to kill this insane psycho drug distributor we were selling to. He wanted me to use it to kill Gus. He used it to make me think Gus poisoned Brock. He told me it just looks like a natural death, like the flu or a heart attack or something. Hard to trace."

"Okay," Skyler said slowly, humoring him because the look in his eyes said to do anything less could be dangerous. "And how do we get ricin?"

"I watched him make it once, but... this other time, I just ordered it off the internet. It's easy. I just need you to get me a computer. I can fix shit so it doesn't get traced back to you." Jesse paused to take a breath. "But... I'll need you to get the delivery – "

"Wait." She held her hands up. "You want poison being delivered to my house? Where Walt or my son could get to it first? What if the packaging breaks and the wrong person inhales it?"

"Or... what about if it got sent to the car wash?"

"Oh. So, then it's just a delivery person and maybe a couple of my employees who could wind up dead. Or what if it got into the air conditioning system? Then just a few customers. Maybe me too, or my kids. And again – what if Walt gets to it first? Or it's intercepted by the police? The FBI? You'd have to think ricin is the kind of think they want to keep track of. My God, you're probably already on some kind of watch list for that."

"Jesus, you're overreacting! None of that shit's gonna happen, okay? It's gonna work. It worked before, it'll work this time."

"How do you _know_? If this is going to happen, it has to happen right. Nobody else gets hurt."

Jesse huffed a long sigh and rubbed his eyes. "Now I know why you married him. You got matching sticks up your asses." 

But he knew she was right. If somehow those dickhead detectives found out ricin was being shipped into the city, traced it to Mrs. White, connected her to _him_ and then everything else... it was over. And if somehow they got away with it on that end, he didn't want the possibility of anyone else getting hurt either. That fear he'd had, when the fallout from the bombing seemed to settle, when Brock was out of the hospital and going to be okay. The fear that he'd fucked up and lost the ricin capsule and it was out there, somewhere, and someone else was going to die. Now he knew that Mr. White must have played him on that as well, faked his caring bullshit and helped Jesse search his house just to plant that cigarette in his Roomba. Jesse felt those hands on his shoulders, heard himself apologizing, and felt sick all over again. He shifted where he stood, crossed his arms over his chest, dug his own fists into his ribs. Fuck it. If it took a little collateral damage to get the evil old bastard, maybe it was worth it.

"Jesse," Skyler began, biting back annoyance, trying to calm him down as his agitation traversed monumental peaks and valleys. "This needs to be planned carefully. Every possibility has to be considered – "

"Yeah, yeah, alright," he waved her off and screwed his eyes shut. It was all he had. Making it look like natural causes was the only thing he'd thought of that might get her on his side. 

The air conditioner hummed over the sound of Jesse's ragged breathing. Skyler sat on the bed again, thinking.

"What about the raw materials?" she asked quietly.

"What?"

"You said that you watched Walt make ricin once before. It's derived from..." she trailed off, her brow furrowed, the catalogue of her memory rapidly searching through every piece of mildly interesting and damn near useless information she'd absorbed after spending almost half her life with Walt. "It's... it's from castor beans, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Jesse sniffed. "Yeah, that's what he started with. Beans."

"Transporting that would be a lot less dangerous than the finished product. Do you think if we could somehow get the raw materials, that you could replicate what Walt did and make it yourself?"

"Maybe... I dunno. You'd need to get, like, chemicals and shit for it too, and I don't exactly have easy access to that stuff anymore. I can't go to any of my old contacts, 'cause as soon as I did, Mr. White would know about it. And wouldn't _that_ delivery be a problem for you too?"

"What if we used a third party we could trust?"

Jesse shook his head. "Who? There's nobody... nobody who wouldn't have eyes on 'em, or who wouldn't tip Mr. White off."

She crossed her legs, shrugged like the answer was simple. "Saul Goodman."

"No way," Jesse shook his head harder, eyes suddenly burning. " _No_."

"You said so yourself – he'll do anything for the right price."

"Did you not notice that I _stole his car_? And that gun over there? That's his too. You know how I got 'em? Beat the shit out of him because _he_ was the one who helped Mr. White poison Brock. Oh, yeah, and his dudes are looking for me, remember? How the fuck is that gonna work?"

"He won't know that you're involved. It'll be for me. He'll be doing _me_ a favor. I'm his client too. I can pay whatever price he names."

"Fuck," Jesse muttered.

"If you don't like that, then the only other suggestion I have is that you agree to Walt's meeting and listen to what he has to say."

"Quit pushing that on me, it ain't gonna happen."

Skyler huffed a laugh, low and dark. The kid was a real piece of work. There was no point to this. How the hell Walt made it this far without strangling him, she had no idea. "And I'm not going to help you murder my husband without even _attempting_ to resolve this in a way where nobody has to die."

"You seriously don't get it, do you? I'm a threat to him now. He doesn't just _talk_ to people who are threats. It's either gonna be him or me." Jesse closed his eyes and dropped his head back. "And, obviously, you pick him." He laughed at himself to keep from crying, rubbed a hand across his face. "You know, maybe we are done here."

"Fine," Skyler stood. "You need to leave town. I'll give you a twenty minute head start before I call Walt. Maybe Hank would like to know about it too. Some friendly competition to see who can get to you first."

Jesse stared, mouth agape. "You gotta be fucking kidding me."

"Okay, how about we make it ten minutes?"

"And have him find out you knew where I was this whole time? That we've been having this fucking conversation at all?"

Skyler's spine was steel-rod straight as she moved across the room, her expression steel-rod hard. "I was home when you broke in. You threatened me. You made me bring my family to this hotel, to deliver Walt to you, or you'd burn our house down. Hurt my children. I'm sure Walt will change his mind about killing you once he hears that."

Jesse stood his ground, challenged her. "He wouldn't believe you. He knows I wouldn't go after your kids."

She raised an eyebrow. "Try it, Pinkman. The stink of gasoline all over my house says otherwise."

"Oh, my God," he laughed again, this time at her, trying to get her to back down. "You're seriously fucking crazy."

"I could say the same for you," she said flatly. "So, we have a deal?"

He finally broke eye contact. Hesitated, jaw set defiantly.

"Keep in mind that I'm not asking," Skyler pushed, her last ditch bluff.

Jesse groaned into his hands. "Fine. Jesus. I'll meet with him." He glared up at her. "But you're coming with me."

Skyler stepped back. Jesse smirked.

*

Their footsteps were accidentally in sync, the sound swallowed up by midday traffic.

"Did he tell you exactly where he was gonna be?" Jesse asked.

"I don’t know," Skyler shot back, casting her eyes around the Plaza as they approached. She glanced over her shoulder, back towards the sheriff's department, the APD headquarters, too far behind them now. She desperately quashed the impulse to turn and run, send them after Jesse or Walt or both, to slip away in the chaos and make her escape. "You listened to the message. All he told me was that he left it."

Jesse halted, grabbing Skyler's arm and jerking her back. "Just wait."

"What if he sees me here," Skyler hissed at him, not for the first time.

"Then game fuckin' over." He looked. Not just for Mr. White, but anyone who looked kind of off. He wouldn't hire some dude and dress him up like an office worker-bee to take Jesse out. That'd be too suspicious. Mr. White would get someone who looked like Jesse, some dealer-looking piece of shit, so it came off like Mr. Cancer Saint just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when some kind of turf war shooting went off downtown. 

Maybe he wouldn't though. Maybe Jesse wouldn't ever see it coming. Whenever he thought he had Mr. White figured out, that son of a bitch would do the exact reverse opposite of what he expected.

He clocked the agonizingly familiar shape of a bald head and level posture, a shoulder in a black windbreaker. Sitting on a bench, dead center of the Plaza.

"There," Jesse said. 

His hand tightened on Skyler's forearm and she followed where he was looking. Walt had his back to them. She let out a shaky breath of relief. She had that advantage, at least, feeling less like a sitting duck just waiting for her husband to catch her in his sights.

"You stay here. Right here. You're a witness, okay? Anything happens to me, this _proves_ to you what he's really like." He looked at her desperately, his breath in short, shallow bursts.

She felt a sudden twinge of sympathy for him, knowing what it was like to go a few rounds with Walt in the interests of self-preservation. Being chased into every corner, clawing her way out with hasty plans he immediately shot down, only to be backed into another trap. 

"Nothing is going to happen," she said, trying to calm him, a gentle hand on his elbow. "Not in public like this. I promise you, Walt just wants to talk."

He shrugged her off. "Just fucking stay here."

Skyler held up her hands in irritated submission. "Go. _Go_." 

Jesse's focus turned back to Walt, back to scanning the area. Skyler slowly backed away, trying to tuck herself further back to the edge of the Plaza, out of Walt's direct line of sight should he happen to turn around.

"Okay," Jesse huffed under his breath, steeling himself. "Okay."

_You can do this, man, just keep your fucking eyes open and if anything looks weird you bail and if not then just stay and listen to the prick and try not to punch his fucking lights out. It's cool. You're all good._

He kept repeating that over and over in his head, _It's good, man, you can do this shit_ , walking forward, steady, purposeful. He kept a running commentary in his head of every person in his field of vision, eyes constantly moving. He sidestepped a homeless man, cart full of plastic bags that for a second he thought could be loaded with explosives, but no, nothing happened, and he kept moving. His stomach jumped into his chest, his heart knocked his breath out when a kid ran right in front of him, missed taking him out by a fraction of an inch. He kept moving, kept looking, hands in his pockets, that bald fuck's head the center of his target, every movement in his peripheral vision sending another jolt through him, making his throat a little tighter.

Jesse's feet stopped moving. He registered the guy standing right across from Mr. White, direct in his eyeline, like he was waiting for a signal. Big dude, stonefaced, bald and dressed in black. Jesse quickly looked behind him, looking for Mrs. White waiting where he'd left her. 

_No. No, no, fuck, NO! Get out, dude, get the fuck out now._

He couldn't see her clearly, just the pale arm of her jacket and a glimpse of blonde, secured away behind a column, safe out of the line of fire.

_Bitch._

Skyler leaned against the column, trying to look casual while holding her breath. She couldn't stand it anymore, dared a peek in Walt's direction.

Jesse barrelled towards her, a pissed-off sneer burned into his face.

"What the hell, Jesse – "

He grabbed her, a heavy arm around her shoulders. A blunt jab between her vertebrae. 

"Keep it together, _Skyler_ ," he snarled, close to her ear, quiet and harsh and deadly, shivering down her spine from her brain stem to the place where the gun muzzle pushed into her lower back. "You freak out, I'm gonna take you over there and shoot you right in front of him."

Jesse moved the gun higher, making sure it was hidden behind his open hoodie, a curtain falling from the arm braced across her back. 

Skyler's voice shook from her dry mouth. "What are you – "

"Just walk with me. It's all good. You're just my insurance."

He pushed her forward before she could say another word and Skyler moved, trying to keep her expression neutral, trying not to make eye contact with anyone around her, focusing on her shoes gliding over concrete, moving air in and out of her lungs at even intervals. She weighed her options, none of them good, all of them with a worse outcome. She kept walking.

Jesse made a beeline for the pay phones, propelling her forward like the gun was a control stick. He kept darting looks at Mr. White and the big guy, and by the looks of it they hadn't spotted him. _It's all good, you're all good, man._

He pocketed the gun again and pulled her close. "Keep your hands on my shoulder. Don't try anything," he muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he picked up the receiver and jammed change into the slot.

She put shaking hands on his shoulder, right where she'd struck him with the bat. She dug down, hard, bunching his clothes in her hands, forcing her nails into broken blood vessels.

He snapped his eyes up to her as he balanced the receiver on his other shoulder, then pushed her back into the sharp edge of the payphone's metal housing. She gasped, a quick inhale just in time to be forced out by the jam of the gun at the base of her sternum. She closed her eyes, focusing on the hope that if she was killed that Hank would be able to act, that he and Marie could get the kids away from Walt. 

Jesse shifted so Skyler was blocking any clear shot from Mr. White or his muscle, watching over her shoulder as the line started to ring. 

Walt pulled the ringing phone from his pocket and after a beat, flipped it open and lifted it to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Nice try, asshole."

"Jesse – "

"If you wanna take me out, have the fucking balls to do it yourself."

Walt was looking around. 

Jesse pulled Skyler closer to him, closer to the side of the phone. She stumbled.

"What? Jesse, I just want to talk – "

"Nah, I'm not doing what you want anymore, Walt. I'm done listening to you. Maybe I've got some shit I wanna say to you, huh? Hows about we meet somewhere a little more private? Get some _real_ talking done."

Walt stood now, looking. "Jesse, I'm unarmed. We can talk now. This doesn't need to escalate – "

" _I'm escalating it, bitch_."

Skyler flinched, lifted one hand off his shoulder to cover her mouth. Jesse quickly scanned her face, trying to figure out if she was going to do something, yell out to Walt over the phone, or try to make a run for it. She was silently pleading with him, her eyes filling with tears. 

She didn't know what was going on. She wasn't in on it. 

Her eyes closed. Jesse eased up the pressure of the gun a little, shifted her over, out of sight a little more, and let out a breath that must have sounded impatient to Walt, who suddenly snapped from the other end of the Plaza, "Fine. _Fine_. Name the time and the place."

Jesse laughed, trying to sound crazy without scaring Skyler any more than he had to. "Oh, you're gonna know it. Whether you get advance warning's another story."

He let the receiver fall from his shoulder, pocketed the gun, and pulled Skyler along with him.

"Let's go," he said.

"Let me go," Skyler gasped. She scrabbled for his arm, trying to pull away and keep up at the same time, hedging her bets. "I'm _done_ with you, this is _over_ – "

"Just chill, alright. I got a plan."

"Chill? You want me to _chill_?"

He threw his arm around her shoulders again, pulling her close, holding her in a vice. "Yeah. Which means keep your fucking voice down."

She hissed by his ear, "You just pulled a gun on me, I am not going to _chill_."

"And I seriously don't want to do it again, okay?"

"Oh, my God."

"Look, there was another guy. Walt had a guy. I was gonna get shot."

Skyler stumbled over an uneven spot in the pavement. Jesse held her upright, kept moving. 

"So you were... you were using me as a _human shield_?!"

He glanced at her quickly, another sharp warning to keep it together. "Nothing personal, okay? I wasn't sure if you were in on it. I needed cover." He looked behind them, picked up their pace. "We're all good, alright? We're going back to the car, everything's cool. Nobody's following us. I got a plan."

She wiped a frustrated hand across her eyes. " _You_ have a plan," she muttered bitterly. "I should've broken your skull open when I had the chance."

"C'mon, Sky," Jesse whispered. "You don't mean that. We're buddies out for a walk, right? Almost to the car. See, just to the end of the block. Nobody saw us, we're all good."

At the parking garage he let go of her, and barely had to guide her up the stairs before she was pulling away from him, taking them up as fast as she could. She walked quickly to the car, almost dropped her keys, jabbing the remote button for the lock and flinging the door open. Jesse trailed a few steps behind her.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Skyler finally released the shout she'd trapped in her chest into the safe capsule of the car. "What was that? Are you _high_? Is this what that drug does? Oh my God. I knew it. I should've checked if you had anything on you, what was I _thinking_ — "

"Look, calm down, alright? There was another guy. Big dude. Just standing there, right across from him, like he was waiting for a signal. Looked hinky as shit."

She took a deep breath. "So... you didn't actually see a gun?"

Jesse chewed his thumbnail. "No," he mumbled.

"It was just 'a guy'?"

"I knew what I was looking for and I know what I saw."

"There was no other guy!" Skyler cried. "Walt just wanted to talk."

"If there was gonna be another guy and you weren't already in on it, do you _seriously_ think Walt woulda told you?"

Skyler hesitated and Jesse pounced. 

"Nah. He still wants you to think he's Mr. Clean. I told you, I'm a _threat_ now, and he's got, like, a zero tolerance policy on threats."

"So your plan is to threaten him _more_?! Look, if you want to get yourself killed, be my guest. Just leave my family the hell out of it."

Jesse rolled his eyes. "The _plan_ is to get him to come to me. Get him somewhere where I'm in control – where we're in control. If the ricin is gonna be too hard, we just have to do it fast. Kill him and make it look like a suicide."

"And you didn't think to ask me about that first? How is that going to work?"

He looked out the window, scanning the parking garage. "Yo, we should get out of here."

Skyler's hands were still shaking in fear and fury. "I don't think I can drive."

"Okay, I'll do it."

"No! No, I'm fine. Jesus. Just... get in the back seat, get down on the floor. There should be a blanket back there."

Jesse stared at her. "You're kidding me."

"What if _the guy_ is still looking for you?" Skyler snapped.

He sighed and got up to climb over to the back seat.

"Use the goddamn door."

The passenger door opened, slammed. The back door opened, slammed. Jesse crouched on his knees on the floorboard. 

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" He pulled the fluffy pink baby blanket from the back seat and tried to cover himself up. 

"Stop talking."

Skyler pulled out of the space too fast, paused for a moment to take another deep breath and count to ten, then started out of the parking garage. She ended up counting to three hundred and forty-eight before she spoke again.

"My sister told Walt to kill himself. That was her reaction to finding out about all this. She hit me, tried to take my baby, and told Walt to kill himself." Her voice was quieter now, her hands steady. "Even if there were some way to lure him somewhere and make it seem like a suicide, nobody would buy it. The way Walt has tried to get Hank to back down – he wouldn't go back on that. My son wouldn't believe it either. The way things seem to him, our family is back together, our business is successful, Walt's sick, but he's fighting to beat it again. It might have been believable before... when he first got his diagnosis. He was depressed, things seemed hopeless. Now, nobody's going to buy it."

"Can I talk now?" Jesse's muffled voice asked.

Skyler sighed. "Yeah."

"I could get you something to knock him out. Put it in his drink or whatever. Then we can get him in his car, and do that thing with the hose in the tail pipe in your garage."

"And then what? You leave town with your revenge satisfied, and I have to deal with what's left. My son asking questions I can never answer."

"You could be talking to him, like nothing's wrong, everything's normal. Then I jump out of a closet, come up behind him and wrap a wire around his neck. Strangle him. Then when he's dead, we tie him to something so it looks like he hanged himself."

"Jesse, no, you're not – "

"Or, okay, not suicide then. What if I could come to your house. When just you and him are there. Get him pissed off, make him come after you, and shoot him in self defence."

"And where do I get the gun? Is it yours? Is it some unregistered thing you're going to buy on the street? If I buy it legally, how will it look that I got it a few days before I used it to shoot my husband?" She felt like she was listening to someone else saying these things in a strange, flat voice that had no attachment to the words. "You aren't listening to me. How am I supposed to explain that to my son? That his father attacked me out of nowhere, so I shot him with a gun that was never in the house before?"

Jesse's legs were cramping, his back hurt. "Can I get up now?"

"No," Skyler said. "It's not safe." They were well away from Civic Plaza, almost back to the hotel now, and she hadn't noticed anyone following her. She just didn't want to look at him.

Jesse groaned, and rest his forehead on crossed arms. "You gotta let go of this thing you have about your son finding out. You want him to live his whole life thinking his dad was some kind of saint, when the rest of his family knows that's complete bullshit? That's kind of fucked up."

"If there's a chance for him to remember his father well once he's gone, I don't want to let go of that. I don't want to have to explain to my daughter what she'll be too young to remember."

"How old's your son?"

"Sixteen."

"Shit, when I was sixteen, I _knew_ my Dad was an asshole. I'd known it for years. You get used to it. And at least his old man will be dead. He won't have to keep trying to fight about it. Just close the book. Dude was an asshole. Done."

"Mmm," Skyler murmured. "And I bet your father never killed anybody. But look how wonderfully you turned out."

Jesse flipped her off under the blanket.

They didn't speak the rest of the way back to the hotel, and once they got there, Skyler circled the parking lot twice looking for the black Chrysler. When she was sure there was no sign of Walt, she parked.

The sudden quiet caught Jesse's attention. "Where are we?"

"The hotel."

He pulled the blanket off, but stayed down on the floor. "So, you're not... you're not, like, turning me in? Even after what happened back there?"

Skyler shifted in her seat to look down at him. "You're going to go in there and write me a list of everything you need to manufacture ricin. You're going to give it to me, and I'm going to go through a trusted third party to get it."

"No, not Saul, seriously, you can't – "

"Listen. After what you did today, you owe me. You fucked that up. What you said to Walt – if his intention _was_ to kill you, you've put a lot more urgency into it. And if it wasn't – it might be now. You owe this to me after what you did."

"Yeah," Jesse said, reluctant, guilty, sick of everything. "Okay."

Skyler stayed a few steps behind him, a few steps to the side of him, as they walked into the lobby. They took the elevator up in silence, sequestered on opposite sides of the car, watching the numbers tick up. 

In Jesse's room she waited by the door while he sat at the desk with a page of hotel stationery. 

"I, um... it's gonna take me a while to think and try to remember everything. It was a while ago. A lot's happened since then."

"Fine," she said. "I'll come back tomorrow morning. I need to get to the car wash now. Is there anything you need?"

"No. Thanks." He gestured to the paper bag of muffins she'd brought that morning. "I got these, so... thanks."

"Order room service if you get hungry. It shouldn't be a problem. Anything you want."

Jesse nodded. He clicked the ball point pen in and out, murmured, "Thanks," again.

"Okay. Good. And I want you to know that if you _ever_ point that gun at me again, either kill me and let Walt find you or I'll personally deliver you to Walt myself and make sure he deals with you. Are we clear?"

"Crystal," he answered, dripping in sarcasm.

"Get the list done," she said, and left him alone to mark the passing seconds with the hollow clicking of a ball point pen.  
 


	4. Chapter 4

The clock seemed to be ticking backwards through the car wash's afternoon lull.

Skyler's knees still felt weak. She told herself it was from being back in the house, plugging in electric fans and opening all the windows. That was why she'd barely been able to eat anything. That was it. Not that she'd sat on the patio and stared at the empty space where her lily of the valley used to be. It was the smell that nauseated her, the locked up smell of cleaning products and fuel. 

She stood back against the wall of greeting cards behind the counter and gently placed folded hands on her stomach, feeling herself breathing. She'd seen the bruise there, the discoloured imprint of the gun muzzle. It was hard to breathe deeply.

"Skyler?"

Walt's voice made her jump. Her eyes shot open. "Oh. Hey."

"Everything okay at the house?"

"Yup. Yup. Aired it out for a few hours, it seems a little better. There's a cleaner coming tomorrow morning at ten. Do you want to cover here and I'll be there to meet them?"

Walt shrugged. "Sounds fine."

"How... how was your... meeting?"

Walt shrugged again, that practiced nonchalance of his. "He didn't show up. No sign of him whatsoever."

"Really?"

"I'm sure he's left town already. Slept it off and realised what a huge overreaction it was. He's probably embarrassed, that's why he doesn't want to talk to me."

"How do you know that? I mean... how can you know that for sure? That it's safe?"

"Well, Saul's guys are still looking for him. We'll stay at the hotel a night or two more, just as a precaution. But I'd say if he doesn't surface within the next day or so, then he's not going to. Then he's no longer something we need to worry about. That _you_ need to worry about."

She didn't get a chance to respond before the door opened and she was forcing a smile and serving a customer. Counting out the change was like walking through some syrupy marshland in her brain, numbers had ceased to make sense. Everything else ceased to make sense so long ago, and now it was numbers, those simple, reliable things she always understood. Now they were betraying her too.

"Have an A1 day," she said, smiling, her voice grinding like the cash drawer when she pushed it closed.

Walt still lingered

"Do you want to take over for a while?" she asked him. "I can go back to the house, see if airing it out some more makes any difference."

"Maybe it's better if we all stay in one place. I told Junior to come by after school. And now that we're both here, I can go pick up Holly."

Skyler frowned, forced a confused laugh. "Why would we need to all be in the same place, Walt? What's going on?"

Walt leaned forward over the counter, lowered his voice. "I'm just being overly cautious. I thought that would've made you happy?"

She shuffled through receipts, kept busy. "If there were some... risk, some kind of... something going wrong here, you would tell me?"

"Skyler – "

"I need to be prepared, Walt. I'm on my own, here, without Marie, and Hank, we can't use them for protection anymore and... I can't... I just... I need to _know_ what might be coming."

"I promise you." He reached for her hand, stilled the restless shuffling of paper until she looked at him. "If I thought there was any serious risk here, I would tell you, and I would act on it. I'm giving this the level of attention it deserves. I'm doing everything I can. We're safe. We're all safe."

She nodded with pursed lips and pulled her hand away when the door opened again, another customer.

"Could you take this one? I'll go pick up Holly."

Skyler slipped out from behind the counter before Walt could come up with some other excuse, service smile dropping from her face as soon as her back was turned.

Jesse continued to be a volatile threat to them, and Walt continued to lie about it. It wasn't surprise, exactly, that unsettled her. It was more akin to disappointment. Resignation. That this was the way things were, and they weren't going to change. She hadn't become as used to the feeling as she thought.

She drove. She wondered if Walt had become more reckless. If returning to something like a quiet life for a scant few weeks had slowly unhinged him further. Then everything else – Hank finding out, Walt being sick again, what Jesse had done – blew the lid right off. Who knew if he was even really out of it? That woman who had come to the car wash in the rental car – what if she'd given Walt some reason to go back? What if it wasn't just Pinkman that Skyler needed to worry about?

A car honked behind her. She stepped on the gas and pulled away from a light that had been green for close to a minute.

For a moment, she was overwhelmed. She focused, forcing herself to notice things on this familiar route that she could drive with her mind usually somewhere else. A clothing store had a going-out-of-business sale. A moving van parked out front of an adobe house with a cactus garden. A woman in a red dress unlocking the doors of a white hatchback. She noticed the traffic growing heavier, slower, stop-start rolls that ground to a complete standstill.

She wanted Holly. She needed to hold her, to know that she was okay. She wanted to drive to Wynne, wait in the parking lot until Junior came out after the final bell, tail that damn Challenger to the car wash. Make sure he went there. Make sure he got there in one piece.

Everything was a threat. The druggie murderer fuckup she'd stumbled into some kind of partnership with, her drug dealing murderer husband she still couldn't bring herself to irrevocably turn against, her brother-in-law who wanted nothing more than to put them in prison and now, thanks to that fucking tape, probably saw her as just as bad as the rest of them. And her sister... she ached for Marie, now, too, knew that even if she turned around and surrendered herself on their doorstep this very moment, that nothing would ever be the same. Marie would never trust her again. 

Skyler was on her own.

She saw something move before the noise slammed her head. She gasped, looked to her window, wishing she'd taken Jesse's gun from him.

A police officer knocked on the window, gestured for her to roll it down.

Her finger shook on the button as she smiled up at him. "Good afternoon!" 

"Ma'am, there's a traffic accident blocking the intersection up ahead. It might be a while before we clear it. If you could just move on up ahead and take the next right, we've set up signs to follow the detour that'll get you out onto Lomas."

The next car in front of her was already turning into the diversion. She could see the glint of broken glass on the road up ahead, the flashing lights. She had no idea how long she'd been sitting there.

"Okay. Great. Thank you."

She hesitated. _Help me,_ she wanted to say. _Take me too, I don't care anymore. Put me away. Just make sure my sister takes care of my kids._

"I mean... not great that there's an accident, obviously, but... Thank you." She smiled again. "Thanks."

"Drive safe," he said.

She concentrated on the rest of the drive, tried to stop thinking, and then when she went into their sitter's house and picked up Holly, heard she was fine, saw it with her own eyes, she felt like she could breathe again. 

In the back seat of the car, Holly's blanket lay on the floor where Jesse had abandoned it. Skyler settled Holly in the car seat, buckled her up, kissed her forehead. She reached for the blanket and folded it slowly. She caught the scent clinging to it, gasoline and fear sweat, unwashed clothes and cigarettes. 

She dropped it on the floor again. Made a mental note to wash it, which she forgot as soon as she doubled over on the seat, covered her face with one hand, the other stroking her daughter's hair.

She let herself break down for a minute. Then she wiped her eyes, blew her nose, splashed bottled water on her face, tidied her makeup. Holly watched her with wide, curious eyes, and Skyler smiled at her.

"Baby, please, please, don't remember any of this. It's not important. Start to remember things in a few years. This will be over, and Mommy will have her shit together then, I promise."

Her tears dried, her skin feeling tight and her head heavy by the time she got back to the car wash. Junior was already there, beside Walt at the counter as Walt talked him through the process of ringing up a sale. They glanced up as she entered, Junior giving a big, goofy smile to his little sister. She squirmed in Skyler's arms in response, made a sound that would probably turn out to be "Flynn" before they knew it.

Skyler gave them a quick smile as she ducked out of the way, carrying Holly to the other end of the room, looking out the window with her to the cars outside.

"Who's out there, huh? Nobody bad is visiting us today," Skyler whispered against her daughter's cheek. "It's just Mommy and Daddy."

She swallowed around the lump in her throat and looked back to the counter, Walt going through an inventory list with Junior. A wistful smile pulled at her lips, her heart. She had always loved those moments when Junior was small, when she'd catch the two of them together when they didn't know she was watching. Her boys. Her Walters, she'd called them back then. She could remember standing in Junior's doorway as Walt held him in the rocking chair and read to him. It was a long time ago, before Junior was diagnosed, before Walt started teaching. A lifetime ago. But she could still hear the creak of the rocking chair, the soft turning of pages. Holly would be that age soon.

She was clinging desperately on to something that was long gone, she knew. But if she could just keep holding on, just long enough, however long that needed to be.

Holly reached a hand up, tugged at her hair, wriggled with impatience.

"I'm here, sweetie. Mama's still here."

She passed by them again, her boys, her Walters, tamping down the sentimental sickness that threatened to choke her. 

"How was school?" she asked.

"Fine, I guess," Junior shrugged.

"That good, huh?" 

"Yep." He looked from Walt to Skyler and back again. "Are we going back home?"

"Not tonight, son," Walt answered, his voice heavy as though it were the worst news he had to tell Junior. "Your mom said the living room was still smelling pretty bad."

"I've got a professional cleaner coming tomorrow, so it should be okay after that," Skyler offered.

"But it might be that we have to replace the carpet entirely, if the gas has soaked down far enough. It could even take a week or so," Walt cut in.

"We'll wait and see though," Skyler finished.

They lobbed the lie back and forth, Junior's head swivelling between them as he obliviously followed the game. He turned back to his father for confirmation.

"Yeah. Wait and see," Walt said.

Skyler slipped away with an encouraging pat to Junior's arm as a customer approached the counter, disappearing to settle Holly in her office, to barricade herself behind the door.

Wait and see.

*

Jesse stared at the piece of paper.

So far, he'd written:

_mask  
gloves  
castor beans  
filters (coffee filters ok)  
drain cleaner (but has to be the right kind with ??? acid)  
grinder/blender (to crush the beans)  
distilled water  
_

He chewed his thumbnail, swivelled in the desk chair, shoved a few cold French fries into his mouth. He'd answered the door for room service with the gun tucked into his waistband. The room service guy had been just a kid, he looked about nineteen. Jesse found himself wishing for one of the first times in his life that'd he'd just stuck to one of the crappy, boring, soul-crushing minimum wage service jobs his parents always encouraged him to get throughout high school, and after. He'd given the dude fifty bucks as a tip, and the kid had looked at Jesse like he'd trade places with him in a second, to be staying in some fancy hotel with fifties to throw around on a guy who brought him a fancy hotel burger and fries. 

Jesse would've traded places with him too, if he could, even though it would've been a dick move to stick someone else in his life.

There was an acid, he knew that. Mr. White had rifled through all the cupboards in the kitchen, and then gone through the garage, looking for something with the right kind of acid – he was pretty sure it was in the drain cleaner. Mr. White had tried to explain to him the differences between whatever acid he used to make the ricin, and the hydrofluoric acid that Jesse had used on Emilio. Jesse had tuned out, though, expecting it to turn into chewing him out again about not buying the stupid plastic bin, like having the body of a guy he'd known practically his whole life fall through the fucking ceiling hadn't made him learn that lesson.

He hadn't paid that much attention. It wasn't like their cook, it wasn't something he ever thought he'd have to learn enough to do it again, let alone without Mr. White's help. Let alone to use it on Mr. White.

A computer. He needed a computer, or a decent phone, anything that he could use to look it up. He looked at the Hello Kitty burner, the battery pulled out again after he'd listened to the message about meeting Walt in Civic Plaza. He slipped it back in, switched it on, thumbed through the contacts.

Saul and Mrs. White. Not exactly his first choices for a phone-a-friend lifeline.

He knew the number for the house phone at Badger's mom's by heart. He couldn't remember Badger or Skinny's cells. He couldn't call Badger. Kuby was probably parked outside, watching Badger playing video games through the window, just waiting for Jesse to call him up and ask for a favour so he could tail him. He could maybe call Badger and ask him to look it up, but what if his phone was bugged? What if Mr. White bribed him and Badger sold him out, told him that Jesse had him Googling recipes for poison?

Mike. He needed Mike. Mike could've got something to him, lost a tail, probably moved him out of town safely without having to bother with Saul's vacuum cleaner guy. Mike wouldn't have rolled on him, no matter what.

That wasn't going to happen.

Jesse kicked his knee up, slammed it into the bottom of the desk. He hissed through clenched teeth, stared at the list like the rest of it would suddenly materialise if he willed it to be there. He needed it to be there.

Shooting that bastard would be so much easier.

He could do it. He could take the elevator up and walk the hall, knock on every door until Walt answered. He'd be too surprised to do anything, and Jesse could just raise the gun and pull the trigger. The noise, the recoil... Walt's head would snap back, like in slow motion, and there'd be that first spatter of blood, going everywhere, then pooling at his head where he dropped, his face crumpled, mouth open, eyes gone dark. Blood everywhere. On everything. The smell... the blood and the gunpowder, burns and freshly slaughtered meat – 

Jesse covered his eyes, trying to get back inside himself, out of that hallway, 6353 Juan Tabo, apartment 6. He was crying, he tried to get up to go into the bathroom, blow his nose, because all he could smell was _that smell_. He couldn't move. 

Then his breath hitched. He pulled himself back, ran to the bathroom, ducked his head under a stream of cold water. He hovered over the toilet, not sure if he was about to puke, but he held on, slumped down to the cool tile, rest his head there.

_Sulphuric acid_.

Jesse remembered when Mr. White had explained about mixing the broken-up castor beans with the water and the sulphuric acid, Jesse had said, trying to seem like he was paying attention, "That's the stuff in stink bombs, right?"

They'd been wearing their respirators, so Jesse couldn't see if Mr. White rolled his eyes or pulled a face like Jesse was a moron. He'd said, "Well – no. Close. Sort of. Sulphur, that's what's in stink bombs. Hydrogen sulphide, makes that rotten egg smell. Sulphuric acid _contains_ sulphur though, so... yes. You're close. In a way. Not really. But... good."

The tiles on the floor of the bathroom had steamed up where he'd been breathing and crying. Jesse rolled over, hauled himself up, went back to his list and scribbled it down next to where he'd written _drain cleaner_.

_Sulphuric acid_

He wiped his eyes, reached for the remote, switched the TV on and flipped the stations, cycling through the endless satellite channels half a dozen times, just for the noise.

*

Skyler ignored the "do not disturb" sign on Jesse's door and knocked. She waited a moment, checked the hallway, and knocked again. 

The chain scraped on the other side of the door, the lock clicked back. Red-rimmed eyes peered at her from the crack in the door and then disappeared.

"C'mon."

He'd already crawled back into bed by the time she came in and locked the door again. 

"S'on the desk," he mumbled.

Crumpled paper balls littered the desk and surrounding floor. A single sheet, written in deliberate, heavy print, sat cleanly in the centre. 

Skyler picked it up, scanned it. "And this is everything?"

"Yeah," Jesse said hoarsely. "I'm pretty sure. Some of that shit you can find in normal household stuff, but if you can get the concentrates it'll work better. There's extra steps to purify the stuff, but... I'm not sure I remember that. I put what I could remember of both on there, in case... in case you need to go shopping for it yourself."

She sat down at the desk and copied the list of chemicals onto a blank sheet of notebook paper. She folded both pages and tucked them into her bag, surveying the litter. "It took you a few tries to get it?"

"Yeah. A few."

"You should get rid of these other ones. Really get rid of them. Don't just put them in the trash. Burn them in the sink."

"Yeah."

Skyler sighed. Jesse squeezed his eyes closed and burrowed into the pillow, willing her to leave.

"I don't suppose I could float the idea again of just _talking_ to Walt?"

"It's not gonna work."

"If you're worried he's going to try to hurt you, even just talking to him on the phone would be good enough."

Jesse cracked an eye open, looked blearily up at her. "Nothing he's got to say is gonna change anything. Just more bullshit. I let him talk me out of too much already. Not anymore. I'm done."

"But what if there is an explanation for what he did? I'm sure you know Walt enough to know how precise he is. If what you say is true, if he... made this child sick for a reason, he had to have known what he was doing. What would he have had to gain from actually killing the child?"

"Jesus fucking Christ." Jesse sat up, angry, but too exhausted to move any further. "'The child'. I told you, his name is Brock. And what you're saying to me right now, is that it's totally okay to put him in the hospital, to put him in the ICU on a ventilator, to scare the shit out of his mom, have us think that he was gonna die – which he _almost did_ – and then lie to me about it, that that's totally okay because that was all the plan was? Because Brock's still alive, it shouldn't count? Are you even listening to yourself?"

"You don't know him like I do."

"And you don't know him like _I_ do." 

The promise of poison felt like it was burning right through the page it was written on, through her bag, into her side where it pressed against her. Jesse knew how to write that list because Walt had taught him. Walt had made it. Walt had made it to kill a man. He'd made something else to hurt a child. He knew these things, and he used them, and passed them along. Now it was coming around to her. She didn't even know herself anymore.

Her chest was tight, she forced a breath out. "Yeah. I suppose I don't."

Jesse rubbed his eyes. "Look, Skyler, you did what you had to do, okay? You're right. I fucked up. I should've been totally sure nobody was home before I broke your door down. Or I should've gone straight after Walt. My bad. You stalled me this long to keep your kids safe. I get it. You did it. You won that one, alright? Let's just cut our losses. I'll figure something out on my own. You don't have to do this. Bail."

"No. No. This... it needs to be over."

He nodded, chewed his lip. "It's, um... it's probably not a good idea for me to be sticking around in one place for too long, y'know? Do you think maybe you could, like, get a rental car for me or something? I'll get a ways out of town, you could bring the stuff to me once it's all got. I'll do the thing, get it back to you, then you can... do what you gotta."

"Yeah. Okay. That sounds like a plan. I'll look into it. Do you have somewhere else to go?"

"No, but... I guess that means I can go anywhere. Harder to track me down, right?"

Skyler avoided his eyes. "I have to be going. I'll try to come by tonight, keep you up to date."

"Wait," Jesse leaned over the other side of the bed, pulled his bag up from the floor. He unzipped it, filled his hands with crisp bundles of cash, offering them up to Skyler. "Take this. I know I'm asking a lot of you here, so... I mean, technically this is Walt's money anyway, but, I should chip in."

She took the money, tucked it away with the list. "I really need to go."

He flopped back on the bed again, burrowed under the covers. "Okay."

Skyler held the strap of her bag tight against her shoulder as she ducked out of the room, waited for the elevator, went up to Junior's room.

She smiled when his sleepy eyes peered out from the crack in the door.

"He's awake!"

Junior rolled his eyes, leaned on one crutch and opened the door wider. 

"And dressed!"

"Do you know yet if we're going back home today?"

"We'll see what it's like after the cleaners have been. We're in wait and see mode here, remember?" She forced a smile again. "You ready to get to work?"

"Can't – can't I go home for a while? I'll just stay in my room. I'll be out of the way. There's no smell in there."

She smiled at him, puzzled. "You seem pretty eager to get out of here. I thought you liked it. You've got room service, pay per view, someone to come in and clean up after you every day... pretty sweet deal."

Junior shrugged, looked around the room. "It's okay. I mean, this is an awesome hotel, but it's boring after a while. And... the – the whole reason we're here is 'cause Dad is sick, and he fainted and... it's just – it's better if we're all home."

Skyler bit her lip, put her arm around him in a half-hug that he didn't squirm away from. "It won't be long, baby," she murmured.

She held on to him, probably far too long for a teenage boy to tolerate from his mother. But he let her and so she tricked herself into thinking, for a moment, that maybe he had forgiven her everything he held against her, maybe he could keep doing it as long as he didn't know the extent of it. As long as he never knew.

*

Skyler glanced at the clock yet again. 9:25. Close enough.

"So," she turned to Junior. "You think you can hold down the fort here while I go meet the cleaners?"

"Yeah, Mom, it's – it's pretty basic."

She smiled down at the counter. "Well, if you get into any trouble, Dad will be right here. And if he's busy, then you can always go grab Mariano, he'll be happy to help."

"Uh-huh. I've got it."

She patted his arm, resisted the urge to hug him again. "Yup. You've got it."

In her office, Walt sat behind the desk, Holly in his arms, lost somewhere inside his own head.

"Walt. I'm going back to the house. The cleaners will be there soon."

"I'll go." He stood quickly, Holly making a small noise of protest.

"No, it's fine – "

"I'll go, Skyler."

"Why? What's going on?"

"Nothing," Walt huffed. "It just doesn't seem fair that you're doing all the work to clean this up."

"And since when does that matter?" she looked away from him and rubbed her forehead, could feel his glare on her. "You should spend some time with Junior. He's worried about you. Since you supposedly fainted at the gas pump. He needs you to reassure him, or he's going to start asking more questions."

He sighed and glanced toward the door, as though he could see out of the office to their son beyond, as if he suddenly remembered he was there. He shifted Holly in his arms, nodding as he turned back to Skyler. "Right."

"Has there been any word? On Pinkman?"

"Nothing yet. But no news is good news, in this case."

"Right," Skyler echoed dryly. She took Holly, held her close and breathed her in for a moment. "Junior's doing really well. Won't be long before he can take over the family business." Bitterly, she laughed at herself. "The legitimate part of it, at least. Maybe I'll save the money laundering lesson for later, before he moves on to the drugs."

"Skyler..." Walt's voice scratched out her name in harsh warning.

"Go be with him," she said, nodding to the door. "I'll get back as fast as I can."

When Walt was gone, she set Holly in her playpen and quickly opened the safe. It was stocked mostly full, everything that was left of the drug money that Walt hadn't buried. She pulled a few thick stacks of fifties out, shoving them into her purse alongside the bundles Jesse had given her. Just in case.

*

"What happened to you?"

She knew the answer, but the bruises around Saul's eyes, the laceration across his nose, couldn't go unnoticed. By the looks of things, Jesse really had beat the shit out of him. Her own bruises throbbed in sympathy.

"Occupational hazard," Saul shrugged it off, gestured for her to take a seat. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this meeting? Your goodly husband, he's got me on some kind of pre-emptive speed dial, but I have to say it's been a while since I've seen you, Skyler."

He was jovial, not letting anything slip. Didn't know how much she knew, didn't want to give it away. It was a good sign for what she needed him to do.

"I need confirmation from you that we still have an attorney-client privilege intact, and that you will honor that, no matter what."

"If you're asking whether I'm aware of the situation with your brother-in-law, and whether I'm going to answer any questions that may be posed to me – "

"That's not what I'm asking."

"Yeah. Attorney-client privilege, of course. I mean, I didn't tell Walt anything about your Beneke financial situation until that cat was already out of the bag, and if I were to tell you about his reaction to that, I'd be violating said privilege with _him_ , which, obviously, I'm not gonna do."

Saul paused and cleared his throat, like he'd said too much already. 

"So... what can I do for you?"

Skyler pulled her copied version of the list from her purse and slid it across his desk. "I need you to get me everything on this list. I need it done quickly and discreetly."

"Quick and discreet, that's how I like 'em..." he mumbled, scanning the page. "Wait, this isn't – if you don't mind me saying, this looks like something more in your husband's department than yours."

"Hence the discretion," she answered quietly.

"No." Saul pushed the list back across his desk at her. "I put my ass on the line for something like this already and got it slammed. I don't know what your plans are for this – and I don't wanna know – "

"I want to kill Jesse Pinkman," she said.

Saul blinked at her, mouth agape. "What?"

"He's a loose cannon. I'm sure you know that as well as anyone." Knowing admittance crept into her voice. She gestured to the bruises on his face. "He already came after you once. Who knows what other loose ends he's looking to tie up once he's done with Walt and me, whether that's going to the police and turning Walt in, or... or worse. He needs to be stopped. And I don't think Walt, for whatever reason, is willing to deal with it himself. It's like this person is some kind of blind spot to him. Am I right about that?"

"Attorney-client privilege," Saul mumbled. He pulled the list towards him again. "We're getting into an area beyond plausible deniability in future conversations with your husband here that I'm not entirely comfortable with, so just as some general _advice_ to you that doesn't necessarily count as legal advice... you're gonna have a lot of trouble killing him if you can't find him. And presently, despite our best efforts, the kid's whereabouts remain unknown."

"I know a way."

"Really? Care to share?"

"Wouldn't that be going into uncomfortable plausible deniability territory?"

He sighed, held up the list again. "And this? How does this work? Like I said, the chemistry genius stuff is your less-better half's side of things. You're the numbers girl."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You think I haven't picked anything up over the years?"

Saul dropped the list and leaned back in his chair. He watched her closely. "How much do you know about what's going on here, exactly?"

One corner of her mouth quirked up, almost a smirk. "Spousal privilege."

"No, come on, I'm serious. Is there some direct threat that I don't know about? This is an... extreme measure, for you. Do you know the raging shitstorm this'll kick off? If Walt finds out? Let alone if you get caught by, you know, _actual_ law enforcement?"

Skyler held her ground. "I'm prepared to deal with that."

He shook his head. "I'm gonna say no. As your counsel, a friend, and a decent human being – "

"Really?" Skyler tilted her head, laughed in disbelief.

Every trace of flippancy was gone. "Really," Saul said. "Don't do this. This isn't you. Pinkman's problem... it's between him and Walt. You can't burrow your way into the middle of this one in order to try to dig everybody out. Especially by doing this. Besides," he shrugged, sitting forward again. "I know your cash-on-hand reserves are a little low at the moment, and given the instability of the current situation, who knows when you'll be able to access enough – "

Skyler stood and dropped the bundles of money on his desk. They thudded heavily, one after the other.

"What's this?" He stared at the cash. "Some kind of rainy day fund hubby doesn't know about?"

"Something like that." She sat again. "You'll reconsider?"

"Jesus Christ." 

"Saul. You _know_ this has to be done. Even if Walt doesn't see it. You know it." Skyler leaned forward, earnest, pleading. "I'm doing this to protect his interests. To protect _all_ of our interests. I promise, this will not come back on you."

Saul sighed, fingers steepled on his forehead. "Jesus Christ," he muttered again. He stared at the piles of money on his desk for a long beat.

"And who knows how much longer Walt is going to be around to be your bankroll," Skyler added quietly.

He chewed his lip, then snapped into action, packing up the bundles, swiftly slipping the list into his breast pocket. "I'll see what I can do," he said curtly. 

"Thank you," Skyler said.

She held her breath as she walked back through the waiting room, squeezing past the giant of a bodyguard, the irritated glare of the receptionist, so obviously through with being in the Walter White business. Skyler could sympathise.

Her heels clicked on the pavement as she walked back to the car, exhaling shakily as she got behind the wheel.

Now came the hard part.


	5. Chapter 5

There was no cleaner. 

They returned to the house late in the afternoon, after Skyler had gone back and aired it out again, had given it another once-over herself, just to make the carpet damp, to sell the fiction.

"It seems better," Walt said, nodding to himself. "We've already been charged for another night in the hotel by now, though. It'd be a shame to let that go to waste, don't you think?" He looked to Junior with a smile. "The sundaes they have on the room service menu look pretty good, and I haven't had a chance to try one yet. What do you say?"

"I'm gonna go grab some more clothes." Junior was heading for his room, seemingly satisfied with his father's condition for now, before either of his parents could come up with a more convincing argument.

Once he was out of earshot, Walt was on his hands and knees, searching for traces of gasoline like a bloodhound. Skyler watched him inhale deeply, imagined microscopic grains of poison filtering into his nose, his lungs, tearing holes through his body in their wake. She couldn't shake the feeling of a missed opportunity, her stomach in knots.

"Is that the only reason to stay for another night?" she asked.

Walt sat up, coughed into his sleeve. "Well, I think this is as good as it's going to get, until we can get around to replacing the carpet."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"Yes," he said, a level stare fixed on her. "It is the only reason."

He shuffled forward on his knees, breathed in the smell of the carpet again.

"Stop it, Walt," she snapped, suddenly angry. She stepped over him to set Holly down. "You're going to make yourself sick."

She stepped over him again to go to the kitchen and get a glass of water. She watched him with narrow eyes as he muttered to himself under his breath, lay flat and reached under the couch.

He pulled the bat out, and she almost dropped her glass.

"What's this doing here? Don't tell me you've got two of these now."

She gulped, set the glass down in the sink. "That night you were out, dealing with..." she glanced toward Junior's room, lowered her voice. "The money. You were gone so long, I got worried. I was sitting out here with it. I guess I forgot about it."

Walt got to his feet and passed the bat to her, smiled at her as though he were indulging some silly, hysterical paranoia. "As long as you're not _overreacting_."

"I wish I'd been here," she said, her teeth clenched. "I wish I could've used it when I needed to. When he broke our door down – "

"Skyler, do you hear what you're saying? There is nothing to worry about. Not anymore. Not with this. He's gone, believe me. He's not your problem."

She stared at him for a long moment, shaken out of it when she heard Junior's door opening. She grabbed the bat, and turned for the hall, hiding it behind her back as she passed by her son.

"I've just got to grab a few things," she called out breezily, and slammed the bedroom door behind her.

*

Jesse answered the door looking like he hadn't been out of bed all day.

He hadn't.

"I have to be fast," Skyler said. "Walt's spending time with our son, but I don't know how long that's going to be."

"That's nice," Jesse croaked. "Being the good Dad and all." He sat heavily on the bed, tossed the blankets to the floor.

"I met with Saul," Skyler said, ignoring the jibe. "He's taking care of it. Getting the supplies." 

"Great. Awesome. So what the hell does he think you're gonna do with the ingredients for ricin?"

"He and I have a don't-ask-don't-tell agreement. I think it keeps him from slipping up and telling me something Walt doesn't want me to know. I use it the same way."

"Huh," Jesse grunted, turning a sceptical eye on her. 

"And, of course, you were right. He'll do anything for the right price, including asking no questions."

"I guess you get preferential treatment. Y'know, as Mrs. Queenpin and everything."

"What?"

"I'm disposable. You're not. You're more important to Walt than me. So Saul has to stay on your good side too, 'cause if he doesn't, you tell Walt and Walt'll ice him."

"Jesse. I'm not Walt."

"But you've pretty much been his, like, representative or whatever, right? Even if you really haven't told him anything, you're still tryin' to argue his case." He slipped into a mocking tone. "Just talk to him, he's not going to hurt you, let him explain, there's totally good reasons for poisoning a kid, just hear him out and go on your way."

Skyler leaned down, got in his eyeline. "I promise you, I'm going to help you get out of town tomorrow. If what you say is true, if you can... if you make it, and it takes a few days for it to work, this will all be over within a week. I understand it now. I do."

"What?" he pushed, wanting to hear her say it, to stop dodging the important words like 'ricin' and 'murder'. "Exactly what do you understand?"

She took a deep breath. "I understand... I understand that Walt needs to die. That you and I need to kill him."

"And you know that you're gonna have to live with that? Knowing that you helped murder the father of your children? Are you okay with that?"

"My choices are that they think they had a schoolteacher father who died peacefully of cancer, or they know they have a murdering drug dealer father who died violently, or in prison. I'm prepared to live with the choice I make."

Seconds stretched out as Jesse searched her face. She didn't waver, she didn't blink. There was something in her eyes that he saw when he looked in the mirror, that same kind of resigned acceptance to becoming the thing you hated most.

She touched his arm. "I have to go, okay? I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah. Okay."

"Okay."

She smiled, reassuring, calm, concerned, a Mom smile that wrapped guiltily around Jesse's heart. Knowing what it would be like for her after she was officially a killer, he felt kind of bad for that. 

"Try to rest up," she said. "Take a shower. Do you need me to get you some clean clothes?"

"Nah. I'm good."

Skyler slipped out, paused in the hallway and heard the deadbolt lock and the latch snap across the door. 

How Walt had done this, lied so easily to so many people, trying to keep them all straight, not even being sure which lies were lies, exactly... she felt a twinge of admiration for him, and instantly hated herself.

She hurried down the hall, passed the elevator, heading for the stairwell. She could run up the two flights back to her floor, maybe not stop there, maybe keep going until her lungs exploded and then everything would be decided for her.

A voice echoed up the stairwell, rising and falling, an insistent angry hiss that made her freeze. Walt.

Skyler placed her foot in the door to stop it from latching shut and leaned out as far as she could.

"Any confirmation that he's left town. Anything at all... well, you need to _try harder_."

There was a long pause, the shuffle of feet pacing. 

Walt cut in harshly, "Fine, _fine_. You've made your point... Try harder with who you've got left, Saul. Hire more guys. Anyone you know. I don't care where you find them."

Skyler bit her lip, tried not to breathe too loudly.

"Just... keep eyes on my family. I can handle Jesse on my own if he comes after me, but... No. _No_. I just need you to find him. Now. _Tonight_."

There was the sharp snap of the phone flipping shut. She stepped backwards, pulled the door closed quietly behind her, and backtracked to the elevator.

*

Her body hugged the edge of the wide king bed, one leg hooked over the side of the mattress like she was still getting ready to run. Her eyes were closed, her breathing even, but she was awake, she felt Walt get up, heard him settle by the window.

She opened her eyes, lifted her head. He was looking out at the parking lot or his own reflection in the window, she couldn't tell. 

"Walt? Everything okay?"

He started at her voice. "Oh. I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't."

"It's just... my stomach. Some nausea. I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

"Well, I'm up now." She'd been sleeping in her robe to hide the bruises, and she gathered it tighter around her as she filled a glass of water in the bathroom. "Here," she said.

His hand brushed against hers as he took the glass and he smiled at her, almost tender, something from another life. "Thank you," he said.

"So," she said quickly. "I was thinking that tomorrow morning – if you're feeling up to it, of course – that you could take Junior to open the car wash. I'll take Holly and all our things back to the house, and then run some errands... groceries and things. We'll need milk and bread, things like that... they've probably gone bad..."

"No. No. I really would feel better if we were all together. I don't care where, just... we should stay together."

She looked at his vague reflection in the window, the unreadable shadow where his eyes should be. "Walt. Please. Tell me what's going on. I _need_ to know."

He sipped the water. Skyler crossed her arms and waited. 

"I know these last few days must have been difficult for you," he began, slow and measured. "I understand that you're frightened – however unnecessary that is – and how that might have given you cause to change your mind about how we deal with things, moving forward."

A chill crept across her skin. "What do you mean?"

"You've been gone a lot, these past few days. Now, I'm not saying I don't trust you, but I would feel more comfortable if I knew where you were. Like I said, I can understand that you might feel moved by what's happened to... to take some kind of action, and I can't express to you how _completely_ unnecessary it is." His voice was calm, level, in that way that she'd grown to be more afraid of than when he shouted.

"Walt," she forced. "I don't know what – "

He turned a cold look on her. "Have you changed your mind about talking to Hank?"

Skyler's heart stopped. Her mouth moved with no sound. She was stunned with fear turned relief, then back to fear: there was no way he wouldn't think she was lying, in this state. "No. Walt, _no_. Jesus. What good would that do me? With that Pinkman kid still out there? Who's to say he wouldn't come after me or the kids once Hank had you locked up? Trying to keep you quiet about his involvement? Then where would we be?" Her voice shook, as she picked up momentum, trying to sound angry. " _He_ is the problem. If anything, I'd be going to Hank about him, and evidently he's disappeared, so what's the point?"

Walt turned away from her, back to watching out the window. "You could understand, though, why it would reassure me for us to all be together?"

She let out an indignant breath. "Are you telling me where I can go? You want to _monitor_ where I am because you don't trust me?"

"I didn't say that – "

"Oh, my God, Walt, that's great, coming from you." The anger was real now. "Is this your idea of a fucking joke?"

She turned on her heel to walk away, but Walt grabbed her arm before she could.

"Skyler."

"Let go of me," she growled.

"I got a phone call from Jesse."

"What? When?"

"It doesn't matter. That's not important," Walt released her to wave the question off. "I didn't want to worry you, but he... made a threat."

She was always surprised to hear truth now. She'd forgotten what it sounded like.

"Threat? What kind of threat? Why didn't you tell me this, when I asked you – "

"Saul knows a man," he said softly. "He can give us new identities. All of us. We can disappear, start over. We'll take our money and we'll have whole new lives. I counted it, Skyler, when I had to bury it. There's eighty million dollars there. We can go anywhere. Be anyone. It will solve all our problems. Hank, Jesse... we won't need to worry about them anymore."

A blow she hadn't been expecting. She stumbled mentally, tied up in knots by the emotional whiplash, not sure if she was afraid or angry this time. "And... how – how do you expect to explain that to your son? Leaving town, changing our names..."

"We'll think of something... the gambling story. I got involved with some dangerous people, owed them too much money."

"And the eighty million dollars? How do you explain that, if you're so deep in the hole?"

"Junior doesn't need to know how much we have. We'll think of something."

"And now that the cancer is back? When you die? Then what? I'm alone in some strange place, trying to be someone else, having to explain it to him... I've had to leave my family behind."

Walt looked at her with pity. "Skyler. There's nothing here for us anymore. Hank and Marie... do you really think they're going to forgive you? That even if we can wait this out and stay safe until I'm gone, that they'll really be mourning at your side?"

It was anger. It was beyond anger. It was what she'd seen in Jesse. It was a puddle of gasoline waiting for a match.

"I didn't want to make that tape, Walt. Fuck you, goddamn it, I _didn't_. Jesus. Why did I... I shouldn't have let you talk me into that... you..." Skyler stepped back from him, unconsciously moving for the door as she realised. "You did that to keep me quiet as much as them. You did, didn't you? You wanted me to have nobody left to go to."

"Skyler, I swear, I didn't know this was going to happen, but now we're here, this is what has to be done."

She wanted to hurt him. "No. You need to kill Pinkman. That's what needs to be done."

Walt flinched, jerking back the arm that reached for her like she was a beloved pet who had suddenly turned and sunk her teeth in without warning. Incoherent sounds of shock caught in his throat. 

"Skyler, you have no earthly idea what you're talking about... how can you _say_ that..."

She pulled clothes from her suitcase, changed in the bathroom behind the locked door. Walt insisted from the other side, that she was _wrong_ , she was _overreacting_ , if she'd just _listen_ she'd understand this was the best option, their only option. 

Skyler pushed past him, gathered what she needed, the second cell phone hidden in her purse. She picked up Holly.

"Where are you going?"

"Jesus, Walt, just let me _think_." She sighed, tried to smother her anger in a fireproof blanket. She had to placate him, somehow, worried he'd follow her. "I'll come back by morning. I just... I need to think."

She didn't stop to let him answer, just wrenched open the door and made for the elevator. 

As the doors swept closed, she called Jesse.

"Yeah?" His voice was thick and sluggish. He hadn't used it since he'd last spoken to her.

"Get everything you need, and wait for me under the entrance to the lobby. We have to leave now."

"Yeah," he said, the tone of her voice kicking him awake. The line clicked off.

Walt was watching her from the room, she was sure of it. She didn't turn around, though, walking quickly towards her car. She settled Holly in, cast a quick glance towards the lobby. Jesse was silhouetted by warm, welcoming light, an incongruous stain. Skyler glanced up to her floor, scanning the lit windows, thinking she saw a looming figure and the movement of the curtains falling back into place. She grit her teeth as she started the car and peeled around to the lobby, barely slowing to a stop under the entry awning. 

If Walt was still watching, his sightline would be blocked. If he was coming down, they'd be out of there before he made it to the lobby.

She leaned across and opened the passenger door. Jesse scrambled in as she rolled forward, stamping on the gas just as he slammed the door shut.

"What the hell?" he asked, slouched down in the seat, duffle bag pressed tight against his chest. 

Holly stirred from the back seat and he looked over his shoulder. His eyes widened, and he whipped back to Skyler. "What the _hell_?" he repeated.

"I'm moving you out of town now. Once I get everything, I'll bring it to you. It shouldn't be more than a day or two."

"Why now? Does he know? Did he say something?"

"He doesn't know where you are. He's putting more pressure on Saul to find you." She paused, added as an afterthought, "And he's putting pressure on me to stay closer to him. He says he thinks I'm disappearing to talk to Hank."

Jesse shoved the bag down around his feet. "This isn't gonna work. He knows something's up. Why the fuck did you have to go to Saul?"

"If that's how you feel, I will gladly drive you to the border myself right now if it means you let this go and never come back."

"I thought you were ready to do this?"

"I am. Believe me, I am. But I can do it on my own if I have to. You can get away to Mexico." The words were bitter sliding across her tongue, but she barely tasted them. "I'll send you pictures from the wake."

Jesse was silent, arms crossed and jaw set. Skyler headed south, just in case, eager to put miles between herself and that hotel in any direction.

"Walt told me that there's a man who can give us new identities. He wants to take me and the kids and disappear. Because of you, and because of my brother-in-law. But maybe... maybe you could take that option. Let it get back to him that you're gone, but nobody knows where."

"Yeah, you can stop right there 'cause Walt already tried selling me on that. I was gonna do it. I was waiting for the guy when I realised what he did... anyway, you don't get a second chance with that disappearer dude. That's what everyone keeps telling me."

"Do you have any idea where you should go?"

"Alaska," he sighed. "I was thinking about Alaska."

She'd meant now, here, if perhaps he had a preference for where he'd like to hide out and set about kicking this plan into action, or if he wanted a second chance to accept her offer to get him to the border. But the way he said it, the way he exhaled those three syllables with reverence, as though it were the name of a lost lover, made her glance at him, a smile tugging at her mouth in spite of herself.

"Why Alaska?" she asked.

He sat up a little straighter, poking his head up above the window line. "'Cause it seems like as far away as you can get from here while still being in America. And it might as well not even be America, like, it's pretty much Canada, right? And all the wilderness and shit... I don't know, it just looks good on TV. Like you can totally disappear."

"You don't strike me much as someone who would be into... 'wilderness and shit'."

Jesse laughed, overcome by the absurdity of Mrs. White being the one to initiate the small talk. "Yeah. I guess. I don't know. When I was a little kid, my folks dragged my ass all around on family vacations every year to every goddamn national park this side of the Mississippi. I hated it then." He hadn't, really, not that much. He'd always liked falling asleep in the back seat, and then waking up in some other world, his Mom ushering his sleepy body up to look at whatever canyon or forest or badland or other natural wonder they'd arrived at. It had seemed kind of magical, when he was a little kid around Brock's age.

He shook his head at himself, banged his head back against the seat.

"Well. Anyway," Skyler started, coming back around to her original question. "What about now? Is there somewhere I could take you that you're familiar with, or where you know somebody?"

"Somebody who'll try to talk me out of it, you mean?"

"No. Not really."

Jesse waited, but she didn't elaborate. He craned his neck, watching the mirrors, an old habit from riding shotgun with Mike that he was finding hard to break, even now. "There's nobody. I know people all over, from before, dudes who were my smurfs... I don't think they'd know about me being involved with Heisenberg, if they're still around. Not locked up or dead."

"Smurfs?" Skyler asked.

"Yeah. You need cold pills, sinus pills, to make meth, for the pseudoephedrine, and you can't get enough of them all at once, 'cause they're on to that. So you get other people to go in and buy a couple boxes, go up to the limit, then they sell 'em to you for a markup. I had people all over when I was cooking on my own. They're called smurfs. Kept using 'em for a little while with Walt, until he came up with another way to do it without the sinus pills... I guess I fell out of touch with these dudes after that. But... I don't know, I guess if I need something I could find somebody wherever."

It was so plain and matter-of-fact. Skyler exhaled a small laugh. "Well. That's more than Walt's ever talked about the actual process of what it is you do."

"Do you really wanna know, though?"

"No. From what little I know, I suppose I don't want to know any more." Miles rolled by before she confessed, words she'd never quite wanted to put together for herself. "It's a lot easier to spend the money when I don't think too much about where it comes from."

"Yeah," Jesse said quietly, those big black bags of cash still poking at the back of his mind even though they were gone, locked up in some APD evidence room, scattered stacks of cash littering the streets, hidden away under mattresses and in shoeboxes. "Anyway, it doesn't matter where you leave me. I appreciate the help getting out of town, so wherever's far enough to be out of your way, that's good enough."

She laughed again, genuine this time. "Jesse, I don't think I have it in me to drive that far tonight."

He cracked a small smile. "I guess it'd be a ways."

Lights through the back window illuminated her just enough to show him that she was smiling too. She changed lanes, and they slipped out of the light for a beat. Her smile was gone the next time Jesse looked.

"Walt convinced me to make a tape," she said after a while.

Jesse looked at her in confusion, not sure where this was going. "What, like... like a sex tape?"

"Jesus Christ," Skyler spat. " _No_. A confession. A false confession that pinned everything on Hank, that spun this story that made Hank the mastermind behind everything. The meth operation, murdering Gus Fring, being shot because he was involved with the cartel. And it made _sense_. If anyone other than Hank or Marie ever saw it, it could convince them... it was... vile. It was awful. And we gave it to them, and..." She trailed off, the dark road and desert beyond blurring in front of her. She blinked, felt the tears fall away. "He was using it against me, too. To completely sever my ties with my sister, so I couldn't go to her for help."

"You could still go to her," he offered. "If wanted to throw the whole keep-it-from-your-kids thing away, I bet you could. Schrader's got enough of a hard on for nailing Walt that he'll take anything."

"It's not just that, not just turning Walt in. I mean... when it's over. However it ends... Walt dead or in jail, or... whatever it is. I'm on my own. I might have my kids, but not the rest of my family."

Jesse huffed a bitter laugh. "Yeah, he's really good at totally emptying your life out like that."

"What did he do to you?"

"Uh, well, let's see... since he blackmailed me into cooking with him, I've had one of my friends die 'cause he was dealing our product. And Walt, like, isolated me from everyone else I know, because they haven't killed anybody, so how can I just chill with them anymore, y'know? Then this dude we worked with who was always looking out for me, well, Walt killed him and lied to me about it, and... Andrea, Brock's mom? Walt pretty much convinced me that I needed to break up with her or else I'd have to start telling her the truth about the shit I'd done. That was _after_ he poisoned Brock. Oh, and the girl I was in love with before Andrea, she OD'd, which I guess technically isn't his fault, but the whole reason I met her is because I got kicked out of my house when my parents found a meth lab in the basement, so, yeah, he's got a little something to do with it."

Skyler was speechless. Her wide eyes moved between Jesse and the road, her brightly lit face seeming to crumble little more with every turn. Jesse ground his teeth. He didn't want her pity.

"I think I would've wanted to burn our house down too," she finally murmured.

"I'm kinda glad you stopped me, though," he admitted. "Cause, looking back now, it would've been a shitty thing to do to your kids. And you."

He turned in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable with the whole conversation, squinting into the constant highbeams behind them. The lights dimmed and fell back a little. The baby caught his eye, sleeping silently, and in spite of everything he couldn't help but smile to himself.

"You know, I never would've thought anything that came out of that evil old fuck's balls could be adorable, but Holly sure is."

Skyler's nose wrinkled in disgust. She looked over and saw he was keeping his hands to himself, just looking at Holly in that sad, defeated way of his. "I... thank you?" 

He breathed a laugh. "Weird compliment of your genetics, I guess." He bit his lip, squinted into the headlights again. They were suddenly on full blast, coming closer to the Ford's back bumper. "Hey, uh... get off at the next exit, okay?"

Skyler's stomach twisted. "What?"

Jesse slumped down, keeping his head back below the window line. "Don't freak, but this dude behind us keeps switching lanes with you. Get off at the next exit and then get straight back on. If he's still there, he's following us."

With a deep breath, Skyler stepped harder on the gas. "Who is it?"

"Don't speed up too much."

She eased up, eyes glued to the rear view. Jesse chewed a thumbnail.

"I don't think it's Walt," she said. "The shape of the car... it's not Walt." She was trying to reassure herself, mostly.

"Maybe one of Saul's guys was at the hotel."

"Shit," she muttered. She should've listened to him. Kept Saul out of it. He probably had someone sitting on her to lead them to Jesse, to tell Walt. _Shit_. "Do you still have that gun?"

"Yeah."

"You can't... shoot their tires out?" Her voice cracked as she said it, like her body knew how ridiculous it was before her brain did.

Jesse stared at her, incredulous. "Yeah, sure, let's cause a couple cars to pile up and get highway patrol out here or something. That'll look totally great. Sure there's no way that'll get back to Walt."

A tense silence settled over them. The hum of the engine and the gentle melody of the radio were whip cracks against their frayed nerves. They passed a sign announcing the next exit.

"Should I signal? Should I cut the lights?" Skyler asked, eyes on the mirror.

"No," Jesse muttered around his fingernails. "Act like everything's normal."

The click of the turn signal was deafening. Skyler pulled off at the exit, and the car behind them followed. 

" _Shit_."

"Okay. Get straight back on."

They held their breath as Skyler turned back toward the highway.

The lights behind stayed locked on them.

"Fuck," Jesse muttered, scrunching further down in his seat.

"Now what?"

"Go off at the next exit."

Skyler flitted between the road, the rear view, and Jesse. "Why? Do we need to make _sure_ he's following us? Because I think we can be pretty damn sure – " 

"No, get off and stay off. It's easier to lose him off the freeway."

"And you know that?" Her voice went sharp and loud. "You've done this?"

"Yeah. I had a good teacher with this kind of shit," he snapped. "Someone better than your dickhead husband, who wasn't out to get me the whole time."

"I am not going to start fighting you again right now," Skyler said tightly.

"Fine by me, yo. Just trust me that I know what the fuck I'm talking about."

Firmly placed at ten and two, her hands ached from gripping the wheel. Her foot pressed down harder on the gas.

"He's got to know he's been spotted? Why doesn't he just back off? Come _on_ ," she pleaded.

"Maybe he's not just following. What if he's on some other job? Like he knows we're both here, and _Walt_ knows, and now he's got a hit on us. What if he saw us both in the Plaza? I mean, how do you know he didn't?"

Skyler regretted asking.

The sign for the exit to Belen loomed ahead. She took it without signalling this time, but the tail stayed. 

"Now what?" 

"Just drive," Jesse said around his fingers. "When you get into the town, keep taking turns. Stay off the main drag. Be unpredictable."

"That's it?" She looked over at him desperately. "That's the extent of your expertise?"

He rolled his eyes. "Try to lose him long enough to pull around behind a building or something and let me drive."

"I need to find a police station."

"What?" Panic quivered in Jesse's throat.

Skyler narrowed her eyes against the lights in the rear view, and quickly wrenched the wheel to skid around a corner without signalling. "He's not going to try anything in front of a police station, is he? He can't be that stupid."

"Uh, did I mention that I'm on bail and they told me not to leave town? If you file a report, if you give them my name... you can't do it."

Jesse scrunched down in the seat even further and Skyler huffed in annoyance. Holly cried, jerked awake by the sudden turn, and Skyler didn't get a chance to think about how much she didn't want to know the reason he was on bail. 

"Damn it," she muttered, throwing a glance over her shoulder. "Holly, sweetie, it's okay – "

"I got her." Jesse shifted in his seat and reached out a hand to the baby, tugging her pink cap back down where it had come loose, tickling her stomach. "Hey, kiddo, don't be scared. Your Mom's a pretty badass driver, we're all good." 

The strange new hand and soothing voice quieted her from a wail to a whimper. Skyler bit her tongue.

Box stores and fast food chains whipped by, and she wound her way into residential streets, small homes with just a light or two still blazing as the night grew later. The tail would get behind for a block or two, and just when she thought she'd gotten away, lights would blind her in the mirror again. She was all turned around, she had no idea where they'd come from or where they were going. 

"I can't lose him," Skyler said, defeated. She was going to wreck the car, or the tail would get desperate and try to run them off the road. She never expected the end to be like this, Walt's partner riding shotgun, Holly in the back seat, smashed into a flaming wreck somewhere off the 25 at the hands of some mystery stalker.

"Okay, okay," Jesse leaned forward, fumbled around on the dash. "You got GPS in this thing?"

"Yes. Yes! Oh, my god." She'd forgotten, almost, that she wasn't driving her old Wagoneer anymore, that she'd given in, joined Walt and Junior with their new cars, because the family that spends drug money together stays together. She switched it on and Jesse punched at the touch screen with shaking fingers. 

"Okay... there. Police department. Got it."

A calm recorded voice told Skyler to make a right in five hundred yards, and the car behind them followed suit as she turned.

"How far is it?"

"Like... five minutes away." If she was going to lose it and run to the police, he wanted to stay on her good side. "Keep on driving, Skyler, you're doing good."

She flexed her cramped fingers, suddenly grateful for him. If he was a good percentage of the reason they were in this whole damn mess to begin with, at least he was willing to do something to help them out of it.

Jesse wasn't watching the lights anymore, trying to stay out of sight, one hand still stretched out behind him, Holly's tiny hand wrapped around his index finger. He'd get in the trunk if he had to hide from the cops, because whoever this son of a bitch behind them was, he was persistent and stupid enough to not know when to give up. It didn't seem like one of Saul's guys. He expected them to know what they were doing.

"There!" Skyler suddenly cried, spotting the sign. "Stay down," she added, and sped up to pull into the station parking lot. 

She kept the engine running, Jesse doubled over and curled into a ball beside her. She held her breath as she waited for the tail to pass. It didn't follow her into the station, kept driving past at a crawl, and she was finally able to see that it was an old black muscle car. She looked at the driver. She caught light hair and a young-looking face, not any of Saul's men she'd ever seen before, not the body guard who'd come to Walt's condo, not the one she'd worked with in shutting down Bogdan. The driver sped up when he saw her looking, peeling away from the station with a squeal, tail lights disappearing around a corner.

She exhaled. The engine switched off, and she folded her hands in her lap. "I should go in there. Tell them I left my husband and there was a car following me and I was scared. Just in case he tries to come back."

"Okay." Jesse was breathing heavily, suddenly feeling shaky and lightheaded with the adrenaline.

"Just... stay here. Stay down. Get in the back again, maybe."

"Can I get in the trunk?"

Skyler's hand froze on her seatbelt. "What?"

"In case he comes back. If I get in the trunk he won't see me. He'll see you alone in there and he won't see me."

"I don't think – that's not... it isn't necessary, you'll be fine just – "

"Hey, I've been locked in a trunk before. As long as you don't point a machine gun at me, we're cool."

"Okay," she said, weary, climbing out of the car on unsteady legs, unbuckling a still-fussy Holly. She pulled a lever, dropped the back seat down. "Climb in through the back," she told Jesse. "Just in case he's still watching."

Skyler kept watch, scanning the empty street as Jesse crawled into the back, tucking himself behind the seat. 

She paused before pushing the seat back into place. "Machine gun?"

Jesse sighed, pulled his knees to his chest, dropped his head down on the carpet. "You really wanna know?"

She pressed her lips together, the lack of answer all the answer in the world. "I won't be long," she said.

The seat went back up like a drawbridge closing, and Jesse let out a trembling breath in the dark.

*

Jesse insisted on driving, and Skyler was too exhausted to insist that he not. They stayed off the interstate, taking the back roads north to Albuquerque. The asphalt was empty, their headlights the only thing disrupting the night.

Skyler sat in the back seat, curled over Holly like she was trying to block her from gunfire or a building collapse. She drifted, her brain tricking her into thinking that her eyelids were transparent, that she could see Jesse turn to look at her, his outline sharp and his eyes hard. He wrenched the wheel and drove off the road, driving with one hand, gun in the other.

Jesse looked in the mirror when she gasped and jerked upright. 

"How long was I out?" she asked shakily.

"Fifteen minutes maybe?"

"Okay." She cleared her throat, brushed her hair out of her eyes. "We should go to the airport. You can wait there until morning. You might have to buy a ticket so you have legitimate reasons to be there. Then you can either... you could rent a car, go somewhere out of town, and let me know when you get there. Or you could... get on the flight you have a ticket for. There'll be a paper trail, it could get back to Saul, then back to Walt... they'd know you're gone."

Jesse stretched his neck, still stiff from curling up in the trunk while Skyler played hysterical to keep the safe haven of the police station for an hour or so. She didn't let things go easily. If he knew anything about her from everything Walt had said and the time he'd spent with her, it was that.

"Was that guy following 'cause of you, or 'cause of me?"

She didn't answer, didn't know how to, and Jesse hurried to fill the silence.

"'Cause he could've been waiting at the hotel, right? If he was there to keep watch over your family, in case I showed up, and then followed when he knew you'd split. If Walt's got this idea about you changing your mind and talking to your brother-in-law, you know he's not letting go of it until he knows _for sure_. And he stops it from happening."

"I can handle him."

"Y'know, I thought so too. When everyone I knew was out of my life 'cause of what I'd been doing with him, I thought, fuck it, y'know, I can make it fine on my own. Then I was just waiting for him to come and finish me off. The dude can't just let people live their lives without turning them to shit."

Their eyes met in the rearview mirror.

"Who else do you have left, Skyler? Even if I'm gone, he's gonna get you all out of town and new names and everything so he can get away with it all. He's gonna drop dead and leave you holding a bag of dirty money. You think your brother-in-law isn't gonna try to find you? Just in case Walt's still alive? You're always gonna be looking over your shoulder, and he's gonna think you fucked him over just as much as Walt did."

"I know all that."

"I gotta do this. So do you now."

"I know."

Jesse shook his head. "I'm not getting on no plane."

"You'll need to buy a ticket anyway," she said quietly. "So you don't get thrown out of the airport. What you do with it is up to you."

"Whatever."

He was sick of not doing anything. The more days that passed, the more he had to fight to keep his anger simmering long enough to get it done. Not that this was something time could fix, but there had been something so perfect about a full can of gas, a couple lines of coke, and blind, impulsive rage. He didn't have to think, he just had to do. Skyler was asking him to think too much, and he was exhausted.

Jesse pulled up at the airport, remembering that time he'd been there dropping Walt off, certain the old bastard was about to croak. Jesse put the car into park, grabbed his duffle off the passenger side floor. 

He wished that he'd found what he'd been looking for back then. When he'd pretend like he wasn't lingering over the obituaries, Jane sitting on the bed across from him, eating cereal in her underwear. He wished the second time he'd met Mrs. White had been to deliver Walt's share of the money, to say it was a donation from all Mr. White's past students or some other bullshit she'd never believe. 

Skyler paused by the driver's door. "So, um... just let me know what you decide, okay?"

"Where do I get the rental car?"

"Just go ask at the desk by baggage claim."

"Okay."

"You'll need to buy that ticket, though."

Jesse rolled his eyes. She seriously wouldn't quit. "Uh-huh. Got it."

Skyler looked down, smiled tightly. "Thank you. For your help tonight."

"Yeah. No problem. Just, uh... be careful, alright?"

She waited until he threw a glance at her over his shoulder, lifted his hand in a listless wave, before the automatic doors swallowed him up. 

As she drove back toward the hotel, she half hoped that the man in the black muscle car, or someone just like him, had been watching. That he had seen Jesse go. She half hoped he'd follow her again. Then she'd know. She'd know for sure who the target was, and who had given the tip off. She'd know whether she had Walt or herself to blame for their night drive through Belen.


	6. Chapter 6

City names and flight numbers lit up, each one tempting Jesse with possibility. It was like breaking open a Whitman's Sampler not knowing where to start, not even knowing what taste you wanted to sink your teeth into, just knowing that it'd make life better for a second.

"Sir? We need to close ticket sales now."

"Uh, yeah, sorry." He rubbed his eyes, picked the first thing on the list. This was one candy box he wasn't going to sneak a taste from. He stepped toward the counter. "Can I get a ticket for the first flight to Dallas?"

He drummed his fingers on the counter and passed over his ID and the cash when asked. The woman looked up from the computer, lifted a suspicious eyebrow at him. He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Yeah, I woulda got the ticket on the internet, but my credit rating sucks, yo. Ever tried living without plastic? Damn challenge."

It was too late at night, too far past the time when her shift should've ended for her to really care. She passed a confirmation over to him and recited in a monotone, "You'll still need to check in and get your boarding pass. The Wayfarer desk opens at four a.m."

"Thanks." He grabbed it, relieved, and hightailed it downstairs to the baggage claim before she could change her mind, decide he was acting too weird and looking too much like a criminal to not be on the run and jumping bail.

He found a row of chairs by the rental car desk and settled in for the rest of the night. He wrapped the straps of his bag around his wrist and held it close to his chest. 

Every time he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, every time he let his mind drift to wonder what he might become if he went to Dallas, and all the other places he could get a connecting flight to from there, he saw Brock through the window of the ICU. He saw Mr. White, taking Skyler and the kids, ending up on some beach in Hawaii or the Bahamas or someplace, umbrella drink in his hand and a smug smile on his face until he dropped dead on a fat pile of money without ever losing a thing. 

Jesse sat up straighter in the hard, plastic chair, his bones aching, eyes wide open until the fluorescent lit logos of rental car companies were seared into his retinas. 

*

Skyler was falling asleep on her feet, hovering behind Junior at the register and checking in with him every few transactions, zoning out in between.

After leaving Jesse at the airport, she'd driven home, not wanting to go back to that hotel room where she couldn't get away from Walt. If he was even there. She didn't want to think about what it meant if he wasn't.

So, she'd gone home with the intention of sleeping in her own bed, alone. But sleep escaped her, a hypnic jerk and a crash inside her own head waking her over and over. She paced the hall, checking on Holly over and over again. The baseball bat was back under the bed, and she made a trip to the kitchen before trying to sleep with a knife under her pillow.

Now, at the car wash, she was unarmed, exhaustion leaving her open to a sneak attack.

She thought she imagined it, at first, nightmares creeping into waking hours until she couldn't tell what was what anymore. The turquoise memorial ribbon long forgotten by everyone else in the city, a chartreuse shirt that burned her weary eyes from the inside out. Twin black eyes, downcast and sheepish. Skyler blinked, and he was still there.

"Hey. How you doin'," Saul said.

Junior was starstruck as he counted out change for a fifty. "You're the lawyer guy! You're on our billboard."

He switched on the bus-bench smile. "Better call Saul!"

"Um, why don't I – I can..." Skyler tried to take over for Junior, to stop them from speaking to each other, to get Saul the hell out of there because she'd told him a thousand times to never come to the car wash, and here he was, now, of all times.

Junior was having none of it.

"I love your commercials... what... what happened to your face?"

"Ah, that's just an... occupational hazard."

Skyler rolled her eyes, quashed the urge to reach across the counter and staple Saul's receipt to his fucking forehead.

"Hey, you know what? Since you've got the billboard out front and everything, how would you like to have a signed photo of me hanging up on your wall here? And don't worry, I don't look like I've met the business end of a bad idea in the pictures. It's a nice tie-in there, and it's gotta bring the customers in, right? A1A's good enough for celebrities!"

"That'd be awesome. Right, Mom?"

Skyler's jaw was clenched too tightly to immediately react. "Uh, yeah, that would be..."

"You're this young man's mother?" Saul crowed. "And here I was thinking you two were schoolyard chums with a solid work ethic."

An incredulous, irritated laugh forced its way out of her. "Well, that's kind of you, Mr. Goodman – "

The door swung open and they both locked eyes with Walt. Skyler's blood froze, her voice died in her throat. Saul gave no indication that he'd ever seen the man before in his life, in spite of the glare that clouded Walt's eyes when he registered Saul not two feet from his son.

Skyler was still locked in place, staring at Walt with wide eyes as he turned and made a hasty exit.

"So, ah," Saul cleared his throat, pulling Skyler's attention back. "Maybe you could drop by my office and pick that up. The autographed picture. Later today maybe."

He gave her a loaded look, waiting for her to pick up on the code. Junior probably thought he was trying to hit on her. Maybe that could be their cover. The perfect explanation for everything. Walt was a blackjack master, and she'd been sleeping with Saul Goodman this whole time.

"Yes. Sure. I... will do that. Thank you." Skyler nodded curtly and silently begged him to get the hell out.

Message received. "Well." Saul flashed a finger gun at Junior. "Nice to meet you, young man, and, ah... good luck to you."

Saul slunk away, Junior cheerfully calling, "Have an A1 day!" after him, as he headed out the door in search of Walt.

Skyler gripped the edge of the counter, coasting on a wave of dizziness. 

"Can you get one for me, Mom?"

"What, honey?" she answered numbly.

"The autographed picture. Can you get one for here and one for me? Louis loves those commercials too, he'll be totally jealous."

She smiled at him weakly. "I'll see what I can do."

*

Jesse had taken the first car offered to him and hit the road as soon as he could. He had no idea where he was going to go, but let that take him wherever.

He drove through quiet residential streets, houses just starting to come to life, sticking to places where he could easily tell if someone was following him. The roads were empty.

Without really thinking about it, he eased on the brake and crawled past the Whites' house. He frowned and pulled to a stop. Skyler's car was in the driveway. If she'd parked in the driveway instead of on the street the last time he was here he wouldn't have gone in. Probably. He didn't think he would've done anything to hurt her. Coming unstuck from his own self-control like that, he only had a hazy memory of it, a vague impression of struggling with her on the floor of the living room. But he wouldn't have hurt her on purpose. 

Disappointment settled in unnoticed, and he realized that he'd been thinking about finishing what he'd started. Going back there and burning the place down. Maybe drive the rental right through the front of the house, stuff a lit magazine in the gas tank. Stay there with it, make sure it got done.

But he wouldn't hurt Skyler on purpose.

He drove away, got on the freeway, going north on the 25 for a while. He switched directions, took a back road south and connected with the 40. The flat, open desert went on forever, no other car in sight. He was alone.

At a gas station he bought coffee, a new burner, and a cheap pair of sunglasses, tired of squinting into the sky. He went west on the 40 for a while, doubled back and headed towards Albuquerque. At a truck stop he used the bathroom, bought a baseball cap and almost laughed at his own reflection in the window. Stupid, obvious fugitive. 

He walked around and smoked a cigarette, exhaustion starting to make him feel heavy. A skinny tweeker-looking kid with a conspicuous backpack, working all night slinging glass and too fucked up to care that daylight had come, eyed him from across the parking lot. The itch was coming on, he knew that just a couple of hits of crystal would keep him on track, make him unafraid. 

Jesse chain smoked a couple more, avoided eye contact with the kid as he walked back into the store and bought a bottle of water. It was so cold going down that it hurt, a stabbing ache in his head and his gut. He swished the sour taste out of his mouth and spat into the dirt by his rental.

Going west again, he kept driving with his eyes on the mirrors and a tremor in his hand.

*

The second cell vibrated at Skyler's hip, an electric charge that made her limbs seize, arm jerking away from the counter. 

Junior frowned at her.

"Wow. Didn't think I had my phone on vibrate," she laughed, slipping it from her pocket. An unfamiliar number lit up. It was a 505 area code, but maybe Jesse had bought a new burner before getting on a plane. "I have to take this. You okay on your own?"

"Yeah. Are _you_ okay?" Junior asked, brow firmly furrowed.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." Skyler smiled and turned away, passing by the windows as she lifted the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

"Yo, it's me," Jesse rasped. "Can you talk?"

"I can listen," she answered softly.

"I got a car and drove out to Gallup. I kinda took the long way around. Took some detours, doubled back a few times. Made sure I wasn't followed."

The relief that he hadn't left hit her so suddenly that tears stung her eyes. She turned away from the window, away from Walt and Saul outside. "Okay. The, um... the package I ordered has come in, I'll be picking it up later today."

"Alright. I'll meet you halfway or something so you don't have to be gone from dickwad for long. I'll text you a place, okay?"

"Sure. That sounds workable."

"Have, uh... you got any more idea where that dude last night came from?"

"I haven't looked into that yet, but I'm hoping to get to it soon." She turned back to the window in time to see Walt breaking away from Saul, walking quickly inside. "Maybe very soon," she muttered.

"He there?"

"Uh-huh." 

Walt was heading toward her with a look she couldn't read.

"Thanks for checking in," Skyler said brightly. "I'll see you this afternoon."

Jesse lowered his voice, as though Walt had supersonic hearing. "Just... don't piss him off, alright?"

"I'll try. Thanks again."

She quickly closed the phone and shoved it back in her pocket, hoping Walt wouldn't notice any difference from her usual cell. 

"Who was that?" he asked.

"Michaela," she answered flatly.

"Michaela?"

"The woman who watches your daughter?"

"So, you left Holly with the sitter."

"Well, she's safe there, right? We agreed on that already."

"You know it's better that we're all together."

"I'm still not sold on that one, Walt. You've made it clear that there's no danger from Pinkman, so I don't see what the problem is."

"Skyler – "

"I am _not_ having this discussion in front of Walter Junior," she hissed. "Go in the office."

They passed by the counter, both giving their son weakly reassuring smiles. Junior continued frowning at them.

Skyler flipped the lock on the office door. "Look, if Pinkman is still around and he is the major problem here, is it really all of us that he'd be after? Me or the kids? You said he was angry because of something _you_ did. And you said he's never hurt anybody. Why is there a threat to all of us? Why isn't it just you?"

"I'm still being overly cautious, Skyler. Jesse is... he's unpredictable. I just want to cover all the bases here."

"Maybe it should be just you."

"What?"

"I was thinking, last night, about what you said... this person that can give us new identities. Maybe it should be just _you_. You're the one everyone's looking for, aren't you? Hank, Pinkman... they just want the great Heisenberg, don't they?"

It was the first time she'd used Walt's other name in front of him, and something dark and dangerous flashed in his eyes, the impact of two once-distant planets colliding.

"After everything I've done, Skyler. Everything I've put myself through for the family – and believe me, you don't even know the _half_ of it – after everything I've done, your solution is to send me away? Like... like some kind of sick animal? An inconvenience?"

"You could tell me where you buried the money. Take what you need, leave the rest. Even a fraction of what we have is more than you ever could have imagined leaving us. That's what this was all about, right? Securing our future? Leaving something for me and the kids when you're gone?" She stepped closer to him, took his hand in hers, dry and callused, an empty, placating gesture. "We have no future. If we stay where we are, or if you take us with you. We have no future."

He was incredulous, his hand tightened on hers for emphasis. "I don't know how much time I have left, and you're asking me to spend it without my family? After everything I've done?"

"Yeah, Walt," she answered quietly. "After everything you've done."

The silence was heavy and his eyes were hard. Walt's fingers twisted and laced around Skyler's, like a snake unhinging its jaw to devour its prey.

"Using this disappearer of Saul's is a last resort, I know. We haven't completely exhausted our options yet, I just want you to keep in mind it's a possibility. Any time you want, we can go. As soon as you see it's what's best, we can go, we can start over."

Part of Skyler wanted to put her arms around him, to bury her face in his neck and whisper, _You're the smartest man I ever knew, but you're too stupid to see I'm trying to give you a way out_. She wanted to beg him, _Don't make me do this_. She wanted things like they used to be, just go back a couple of years. Life hadn't been easy and they probably hadn't been happy then either, but from this vantage point it seemed like some gilt framed paradise.

Instead, she yanked her hand away, crossed her arms over her chest. "What are these other options?"

"I'm going to look for Jesse. Saul's guys think they've tracked him down to Belen, so I'm going to go there and see what I can find. Then... deal with the situation as it arises."

"Belen?" her voice broke. "What's – what's in Belen? How do you know he's there?"

"It's the best lead we've got so far. Saul's sent more guys down there. Hopefully they'll dig something more concrete up. He's probably holed up in some fleabag motel, high out of his mind. It shouldn't be hard to find him."

"And then what?" she whispered. "You're going to kill him?"

"I didn't say that." 

"Then what?"

Walt's features were hard, controlled, impenetrable. The shutters had gone back down. He shook his head at her. "Don't worry about it. Just stay here with Junior. Saul's guy, Huell, still has eyes on you here, just in case. You'll be safe."

"No, I – I have to leave. I have to pick up Holly early – that's what Michaela called about, before, she – her mother, she has to take her mother to a doctor's appointment. Her car broke down – her mother's car – and – " 

Walt held his hands up, mercifully cutting off Skyler's flustered grasp for a lie. "That's fine. Go pick up Holly, and Junior will be safe here. Then you can all be together."

"How long will you be gone?"

"However long it takes."

And with that he was gone, and Skyler lowered herself to the ground where she stood, one hand on the lock of the safe, waiting, just to make sure he wasn't coming back.

*

Saul was sufficiently chastened when he let Skyler into his office.

"Look, I know you're not a fan of me stopping by like that, but it seemed like an easy way to kill two birds – three, even, since I did need to get my car cleaned after Pinkman's little joyride."

"That isn't actually my main concern right now. The tail I had to lose last night is a bigger problem."

"Tail, huh?"

"Cut the shit, Saul – "

"Okay, alright. On an educated long shot, I thought you _might_ be able to lead us to Pinkman. I'm sorry if that guy gave you a scare last night, but bodies are thin on the ground at the moment, and there aren't exactly an abundance of people I can recruit without bringing anyone new into this operation. It's too risky. But using clueless dingbats who don't know how not to get made on a tail by a soccer mom, well... equal risk there. My bad. Your husband has been a little too _insistent_ about finding Jesse, so I didn't have much of a choice."

"What did he tell you, exactly? The man following me?"

Saul puffed out a long breath. "That he thought you made him somewhere around Los Lunas. He followed you to Belen, stayed on you – and from what he said, it was _aggressively_ , because the kid has no fucking idea what he's doing – and then gave up when you pulled in to the cops. Smart move, by the way." He paused, pressed tented fingers against his bottom lip. "And, ah... he thought he saw someone else in the car with you."

Skyler stayed quiet, keeping a carefully controlled poker face. Her hands tightened on the arm of the chair. Saul noticed, registering the slight note of discomfort, moving to smooth it over.

"He, ah... he couldn't get a clear look. Just thought he saw someone in the passenger seat, likely male, but no clear description. And this guy who was following you – he'd recognize Pinkman. So, from what he said... it could very well have been your son. The kid at the car wash this morning. Out for a nice little night drive with Mom."

"This man came to you with this?" she asked slowly. "He didn't tell Walt?"

"The guy told me, and I passed the information on. That Pinkman might have been spotted in Belen, but it couldn't be confirmed. That's the conclusion I came to from the information gathered by a pinch hitter completely unskilled in the art of PI work."

"Because Walt doesn't need to know if I was driving to Belen with our son in the middle of the night, does he?"

Saul shrugged, slyly noncommittal. Slowly, he said, "Yeah... I don't see how it's relevant to what's going on. That's family business. Above my pay grade." 

"And this... information gathering..." she set two bundles of money on his desk, another twenty thousand. "It won't be happening again?"

Saul's chair creaked in the dead silence as he leaned forward. "Look, Skyler, enough with the doubletalk. I don't know what you're getting into here – "

"And you don't need to know. We've established that."

"If you know where Jesse is, or you know how to get to him, wouldn't it be easier to turn him over, no questions asked, and let someone else take care of it? Someone who, you know... has a solid track record with this kind of thing?"

"No," Skyler answered firmly. "It's like the man you sent to follow me last night. You can't expect results from someone who isn't properly equipped for the job."

"Yeah. Yeah, ain't that the truth." He picked up the money and kneeled down in front of the safe, twisting the combination in from muscle memory.

"So there'll be no more information gathering?"

"Yeah. No more. Walt's asking me to keep eyes on you for safety, though, so – "

"Let's not and say you did."

Saul pulled an innocuous cardboard box from the depths of the safe and handed it to her. Skyler felt its weight, lifting it easily but feeling as though the bones in her wrists might snap all the same.

He leaned back on his desk and sighed. "If it's gonna get the job done..."

"It will," she murmured. "Everything's here?"

"Yeah."

Skyler looked up at him with wide eyes, her face softening in gratitude. "Thank you, Saul."

"Just, one last time: if this plan of yours shits the bed, get out of it before it's too late and we've lost Pinkman. There are other ways to do this that don't necessarily have to involve you or Walt."

Skyler stood up, cradling the box like it was her child. She smiled firmly, discussion over. "Thank you, Saul," she repeated.

"I tell ya, some people are just immune to good advice," he muttered.

"Yeah," Skyler breathed out on a sigh of relief, letting Saul open the door for her, moving quickly through his waiting room, avoiding eye contact with the rest of his clients. She stood outside on the pavement for a moment, disoriented, hesitant. Someone might still be watching her. Walt might know everything, he could be waiting here for her. The whole thing might be a setup.

She took a deep breath, forced her feet to move one after the other until she was locking herself into the car, staring at the box on the seat beside her.

Thumbs stumbling, she found Jesse's new number and waited while the line rang.

"Yeah."

"I have it. I need to get it to you now."

"Alright. Uh... head west on the 40, then get off at exit 180. There's like a truck stop there, it should take you about an hour. I'm headed there now."

"Okay."

"Make sure you're not followed."

"I don't think that's going to be a problem anymore."

Jesse was silent for a moment. Skyler thought she could hear his teeth grinding, but maybe it was just the sound of a gravel road under his tires.

"Why? Did you find something out? Who was it? What'd you do?"

"Everything's fine," she answered smoothly.

Jesse groaned. "Jesus. You're unfuckingbelievable. Just – exit 180, okay?"

"See you there."

She dropped the burner on the seat next to the box, and couldn't help but smile to herself.

*

Jesse leaned with his arms crossed on the roof of the rental in the back corner of the lot, a cigarette burning down between his fingers. He took a drag as Skyler's car pulled in, watched her circle the lot, doubling back when she noticed him.

"Hey." He leaned down as her window opened. "So'd you find out anything or not?"

"It was Saul's guy. Someone new he brought on board because Walt was putting pressure on him to find you. Apparently the guy wasn't an expert in following people. That's why you were able to spot him."

Jesse chewed the inside of his cheek, noticed the cardboard box on the passenger seat for the first time.

"Apparently he knows you," Skyler continued. "Saul said he would've been able to recognize you, but didn't get a clear enough look at you to be sure. But, anyway, Walt thinks you're in Belen, Saul isn't sending anyone after me to get to you anymore, so I think we've been given some extra time here to do what we need to."

He was momentarily caught up in his own head, batting around the idea that he'd have to take that box away with him and turn whatever was in there into a murder weapon. Doubt ate away at him, suddenly making all of this seem too big, something he couldn't do without fucking it up.

Then he heard what Skyler had said, like she was talking to him through a satellite, her words reaching him five seconds too late.

"Wait, wait – the dude who followed us knows me?"

"Yeah. Saul said he wanted to use someone who already knew about... what you and Walt do. That it was less risk."

Jesse's eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened. Skyler started talking faster.

"I, um, I saw him, when he passed us at the police station. He looked young, around your age I suppose. White guy, light hair, cut short. The car was black, it looked like kind of a late 70s muscle car... if... if that helps."

"Fuck," Jesse snarled, banging his fist against the car door. 

Skyler flinched.

"No matter what Saul said, no matter what he promised you about killing the tails, you gotta keep a watch out for this guy, okay?" Jesse's voice was low, his gaze earnest and insistent. "Dude's a complete fucking psycho. Remember I told you about how a kid got killed when we were doing a job?"

"Yeah," Skyler said. She'd been trying to forget it. 

"That was him. Shot him like it was nothing. He's fucking _crazy_. Name's Todd Alquist, and if you see him hanging around you or your kids or anything, fuck all this, just go to the cops or something. Start carrying a gun. Fuck what happens to Walt. If both those assholes end up in jail then oh well."

"Do we need to do something about him too?"

"What?"

"This Todd. Is he a danger to my family? To you? Is he so involved in the business that he'll be suspicious when something unexpected happens to Walt?" Skyler's voice dropped to a whisper, and Jesse leaned in closer, because he had to be misunderstanding her here, he _had_ to. "Does he need to be dealt with?" 

"You want to... add another murder to the list?"

"I'm asking if it will be necessary to do something about him to get our original plan to work." She sat back, checked her mirrors, looked behind her around the lot. She'd caught Jesse's paranoia, taken a page on problem solving straight out of Walt's book. "I can't do this and have it be for nothing. If there's still some danger out there, some chance that this isn't going to _solve_ anything... I need to protect my children. You understand that, right?"

"I don't think... just... one thing at a time, alright?" Jesse hissed. Mrs. White being the one to float the idea of killing someone – it wasn't meant to happen like that. "I mean, the dude's a psycho, but... if it looks like Walt just... dies, you know, I don't think he's gonna, like... avenge him or anything. Just... I'm just saying, watch your back. If Saul's working you and Todd's the one he's still got following you... it's a whole other thing than one of Saul's regular guys being on your tail."

"Well. Thanks for the heads up." 

Jesse backed away from Skyler's door as she opened it, caught off guard, almost tripping over his own feet and falling back against his rental car.

"You want to pop your trunk?" she asked.

"What?"

She gestured to the cardboard box, repeated it slowly. "Pop your trunk, I'll put this in there. I have to get back... Walt said he's going to Belen to look for you, but who knows how long that'll hold him."

"Oh. Uh, yeah. Sure."

He fumbled around the controls of the unfamiliar car for a moment before the trunk clicked open and Skyler gingerly pulled the box from her passenger seat.

"Everything's there?" Jesse asked as she slid it in, the contents rattling distantly.

"It should be. Did you want to check before you go?"

Jesse stared at it. "I guess," he said, not convinced, and prised open the packing tape with his keys. 

He looked long enough to register that _something_ was in the box. Familiar things. Chemical powders and liquids in their cleanly marked containers. A respirator and litmus paper and filters. The sealed baggie of castor beans.

Skyler craned her neck and peered over his shoulder, tried to take it in.

He snapped the edges of the cardboard closed again, slammed the trunk shut. "Yeah, it's all there," he muttered.

"Okay," she said in a tone better suited to friends parting after meeting for coffee and a chat, not whatever the hell they were to each other meeting in a desolate truck stop off the interstate to pass off the tools for conspiracy to commit murder. "So, should we meet back here after you have it made?"

"Yeah. If that works for you."

Skyler nodded. "Did you find somewhere to stay in Gallup?"

Jesse fished his smokes out of his pocket. "Yeah," he mumbled, lighting up. "It's a total shithole. It won't look suspicious that someone like me is there."

"You should text me the name and your room number. Just in case."

"In case what?"

"If this Todd person is as bad as you say, and if he's still following me, it might be a good idea to have somewhere safe I can go. To find you and... regroup. Replan. And even if he's not... if something changes with Walt and we have to switch tactics..." she shrugged. "An insurance policy. Just in case."

"Insurance policy?" He echoed his own words from that day in the Plaza back at her with narrowed eyes. "Insurance policy like you're gonna lead Todd or Walt to me if I don't get it done fast enough? Insurance policy like you're calling Schrader on me just before Walt hauls your ass out of town?"

"Jesse, no. I wouldn't – we want the same things here."

She smiled her Mom smile again, but it didn't make sense this time. It made him guilty again, like he'd already ruined her before he'd even made her kill somebody. He realized that him and Walt, they'd always be partners. Anyone who came into contact with both of them had their souls corroded. They made it happen together without even knowing it, without even trying.

Jesse turned his head and exhaled a stream of smoke. That tweeker kid from his stop that morning was still skulking around the lot, getting ready to help cross-country drivers make it through another night. He turned back, and Skyler was looking at him intently.

"You take off first. I'll wait, make sure nobody's been watching."

Skyler got back behind the wheel and he leaned down to her window again.

"I thought about leaving, y'know. I bought the plane ticket and thought about using it."

"What made you stay?"

Jesse dropped the cigarette on the asphalt and stomped it out. "Nothing's changed. Nothing's gonna."

"Yeah," Skyler murmured, mostly to herself. "You watch your back too, okay?"

He waited until she was a speck of dust merging back onto the interstate, and waited some more to see if anyone paid attention to her departure. His eyes wandered, fixing on the kid across the lot, some lone beacon of bright blue escape in the barren brown of the desert. He wondered if anyone had ever thought of him in that way, if the way they looked at him changed after they realized their life was completely fucked. 

The car door slammed and his sneakers beat the pavement. His sweaty hand clutched at the wad of bills in his pocket, his tongue sneaked out to dampen dry lips. He could taste it already, could hear the sound of a freight train inside his head.

"Yo, man, you got the blue?"

The kid jerked his chin up in a slight nod and dropped his backpack on the ground. "Hey, bro, was that your lady? She kick you out and bring you a box of your stuff?"

Jesse suddenly hated this dickhead and his small talk, but it was impossible to back down now. Once he got the idea in his head, the taste in his mouth, he couldn't let it go. "Uh, yeah. Yeah. Been a real shitty week with her."

"Ice cold, man." The kid covertly showed him a fistful of baggies and gave Jesse a toothy smile. "Get it? Ice cold?"

"Gimme two teenths," Jesse answered through gritted teeth.

The familiar movements of money and meth changing hands put Jesse at ease for a split second, before he pocketed the blue and stalked back to his car, wondering where it had come from. If Walt had turned it over to Todd once he got out. If Walt was even really out.

He drove back to Gallup with Blue Sky of unknown origins resting heavily in his pocket, anticipation pounding in his head in the beats between his pulse.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note for this chapter: a lot of homicidal ideation and drug use.

"It's good to be home, isn't it?"

"As – as long as you're feeling okay, Dad. Then it's good to be anywhere."

"I'll toast to that."

Walt and Junior clinked their drinks together and Skyler smiled thinly across the table at them, lifting her own glass in their direction. 

"You know," Walt began. "I've been thinking – or, well, your mother and I have been thinking – maybe it's time for an upgrade. A new home. And if we're going to look into buying another car wash, what's to say we have to stay in Albuquerque? Why not expand out of the city? Out of the state, even? We could pick a city we like the sound of and make it our own."

Silverware scraped on china as Skyler set her fork down. "Walt, I think it's a little too soon to bring this up – "

"But – but what about school?" Junior asked, head turning between his parents. "I don't wanna change schools when I'm almost a senior. That's a bad idea, right Dad?"

"You're underestimating yourself, son! You'll adapt, make all new friends, do just as well anywhere as you would at Wynne."

"But... why leave town if the car wash is going good? Wouldn't you have to start over again? And what about Uncle Hank and Aunt Marie? We'd have to stay close by so we could still see them, right?"

"It's okay, sweetie," Skyler jumped in. "Nothing's definite yet. It's still a big maybe. And those are all really important things we need to think about."

"But it is something to keep in mind," Walt said, his desperation to sell the idea a sharp edge on his voice. "It might be happening. Soon."

"Umm... okay?" Junior sighed, his good mood turned sour as he sullenly pushed food around his plate.

Skyler glared at Walt from behind her wine glass while he pointedly avoided her gaze. He was getting sloppy, and they both knew it. 

As she set her glass down, her eyes drifted to the empty seat across from her son. The silent phone in her pocket was a heavy weight against her leg.

*

The phone remained quiet and dark, nothing new since Jesse had sent her the name of the hotel and his room number shortly after she'd left the truck stop. Skyler didn't know how long it was supposed to take, but she felt like there should be _something_. A progress report, an update. Something. 

She gave up for the night and switched the phone off before sticking it in the bottom of a box of tampons, zipped up inside a makeup bag, shoved in the back of the bathroom cabinet. She wondered what hiding places Walt had used for these things back when it all started. The second cell phone. The money. The gun. 

She steeled herself and opened the bathroom door, back into the bedroom. "You shouldn't have said anything to Junior about moving. There's no way to ease him into it if we end up having to run away and change our names."

"It might be easier," Walt began, "If it doesn't completely blindside him. It'll be easier to explain that there was a problem here, and we had to leave... whatever problem it is that explains it."

"You didn't find out anything more about where Pinkman is?"

Walt sat heavily on the bed, dropped his glasses on the nightstand with a sigh.

"I'm trying, Skyler."

Jesse's words echoed in her head: _Don't piss him off_. She sat beside him. "It seems like he really is gone, Walt. Wouldn't something have happened by now?"

"You don't know him. This thing I did... why he _thinks_ I did it... he won't let it go so easily."

"Then he is dangerous. You keep saying he isn't – "

"He isn't. I just don't want to leave this unresolved if I don't have to."

Skyler toyed with the sash of her robe, tying knots around her fingers. "What did you do to him, Walt?"

He turned to her, looked her in the eye, a long, searching gaze that asked whether she really, _really_ wanted to know. Skyler thought this might be it, the moment he unburdened a piece of his soul, if he still had anything of his soul left to give her.

"It's nothing... it's nothing worse than the things you know that I've done."

His weight rose from the bed and the bathroom door shut quietly, leaving her alone to untangle herself.

*

Skyler stared up at the bedroom ceiling, reflected light from the pool outside twisting shadows across the room, as Walt slept beside her.

She tried to picture herself smothering him with a pillow. It wasn't the first time that a thought like that had crossed her mind in recent sleepless nights, but instead of idle wondering there was planning, there was intent. She contemplated the logistics of it, of whether he would buy it if she attempted to initiate sex in order to get on top of him, if once there she had the strength to keep a pillow pressed over his face while he struggled. If she had whatever it took to follow through with it at all.

Carefully, she lifted the covers and slipped out of bed, waiting a moment to see if Walt woke up before locking herself in the bathroom. She unearthed the phone, switched it on, impatiently chewing her lip through the long seconds it took for the phone to start up and reach out to cellular towers and satellites.

There was still nothing.

Skyler sat on the hard tile floor and cradled the phone in her hands for a few minutes, willing it to light up, to tell her it was done, that she wouldn't have to kill her husband alone.

The idea was so stuck in her head now, there seemed to be no way to get through this without blood on her hands.

She hid the phone again, flushed the toilet and ran the faucet. She switched off the bathroom light and waited while her eyes adjusted to the dark.

Walt was still asleep, and she watched him for a long time.

*

Junior went to school, Walt lingered around Skyler at the car wash, and every time she passed by the roar of the machinery she wished the brushes had the force of a jet engine and could suck Walt up inside them, obliterating flesh and bone, if she just happened to push him the right way.

"Instead of just taking a vacation to Europe, maybe we could go there. Permanently."

Walt spoke quietly to her between customers, standing close, trying to seduce her with the improbable.

"Nothing would be permanent," she murmured. "What do I do when you're gone?"

"I saw the way you looked at that picture in the travel brochure. The Italian lakes. You could spend the rest of your days drinking wine in a grotto and writing. Get a beautiful villa for you and the kids. You could start again. You've always been good with languages, you could pick up Italian so quickly. You'd never have to work if you didn't want to. It'd be perfect. You could be happy."

A smile flickered across her mouth. "It does sound tempting."

She pictured drowning him in _Lago di Como_ , in water so clear that she could see his teeth bared and the whites of his eyes, his face going slack when he finally stopped breathing.

*

She tried calling Jesse, but the phone rang out. She tried calling again, unsure if she should leave a voicemail. What if the man who followed them, the one Jesse warned her about, had found him? What if her leaving a message gave Walt proof that she'd been going behind his back, that she'd known where Jesse was this whole time?

_Update please?_

She sent the text. Worst case scenario, it wouldn't prove anything.

*

The sky was stained orange and it was almost closing time. 

"Any news?" Skyler asked softly as Walt passed by.

"He bought a plane ticket but never got on the flight."

Her hands balled into fists under the counter. "What does that – what does that mean?"

"It means he wanted to stay in town for some reason." Walt was distracted, distant. Skyler could practically see him plotting their escape. 

"So now what?"

"I should get the money. Tonight. We need to be ready to go."

"No," Skyler said. It was too fast and desperate. She suddenly had Walt's focus. "I don't want you out there alone. Wherever you buried it. After last time – you collapsed, Walt, I – I don't want anything to happen to you. It's not safe. Pinkman or not, it isn't safe for you to be out there alone."

"What do you expect me to do? I can't take someone out there with me, with that much at stake."

"Take me. Or at least tell me where it is in case something happens to you."

An answer caught in Walt's throat, and remained there as the door swung open and a customer approached the counter. When Skyler glanced back, he was already retreating and her mind was filled with a picture of Walt lifeless on the desert floor, bloodstained money, and a gun in her hand.

*

She lay awake in bed, hands folded over her chest, shadows twisting across the ceiling. 

"Will you take me with you? To get the money?"

Walt sighed and the sheets rustled. "I'll be fine. Even if he knew where the money is, it's not what he wants."

"It's not him. What if you pass out again? What if it's for more than a few hours? What if you fall and break a bone or hit your head and you're not able to get back?"

"Skyler..."

"Tell me where it is. At least tell me where the money is buried. If you don't come home, I can go out there and bring you back." 

"If I don't come home," he said slowly, "Won't that solve everything? You said so yourself. It's me everyone wants."

She watched the shadows move. Walt rolled on his side, away from her. Skyler's hands crept down to her waist, clutched the sash of her robe. She could pull it across his throat, strangle him that way. Make it look like a hanging, like Jesse said.

"Nothing solves this, Walt," she murmured. "Nothing solves any of it."

She rolled away from him and listened to him breathe.

Her second cell was dark and silent in its hiding place

*

By the time the alarm jolted her awake from a few hours' sleep, Walt was gone. She pasted on a smile and ate breakfast with Junior. She got Holly off to the sitter.

She sat in her car and dialled Jesse again. "Come on, come on, pick up you little shit."

It didn't ring out this time. Straight to the automated voicemail message.

She drove west on the 40, headed for Gallup.

*

The first bump burned and the second lit him up, neurons in his brain exploding like fireworks. Jesse knew then that it wasn't Mr. White's glass. The colors weren't as bright, the pinwheels fizzing out too fast. It was true. Walt was out.

Jesse drew the shades and unpacked the box, spreading the contents across his hotel room. He rearranged things, setting them out in the order that he needed them. 

Another bump failed to shut up Walt's voice in his head, telling him he had it all wrong.

Jesse took a walk, roaming circles around old Route 66 neon. The phone in his pocket kept buzzing, the signs were buzzing, vibrations getting into his ears and under his skin.

He wound up in a bar and stayed there for a while. Music and people and the smell of beer and nachos. A fight broke out and he paid as much attention to it as the football game on the TV in the corner. It felt like home. It felt like things were after Gale.

The smell of beer and nachos turned to the smell of blood, and he split, walking fast, turning corners and getting lost so many times he thought he might be able to draw a perfectly accurate map of Gallup but not be able to place his hotel. He saw headlights coming on out of the corner of his eye, over and over again, saw the low-slung shadow of Todd's El Camino. He pulled his hood up and walked faster. There was nothing there, but next time there might be.

A neon sign different from all the others loomed up ahead, and he ran the rest of the way to his hotel, locked the flimsy door and pulled the gun out of his bag as sunlight started to creep in.

Another bump, and he could _do_ this. He had to. It wouldn't be like Gale. Gale didn't deserve it. Walt did. Jesse wouldn't be pulling the trigger this time, not really. Mrs. White would be the one in the doorway with the gun in her hand.

There were so many missed calls from her on his phone. A couple of texts. He turned the phone off because that was a distraction he didn't need. He didn't need to think about that.

With gloves and mask and the airconditioning turned off, he separated out a couple of the beans and made one batch. Then another, slightly different. If he did it enough times, one of them had to work. 

Beads of sweat trickled down his spine, pooled at the small of his back. His eyes burned from being open for so long. He went outside to smoke, to get fresh air, and it was dark and the neon was buzzing again.

Someone was watching him. Headlights turned on and a car pulled out of a space across from him. He ground out his cigarette and stood back behind his door, eye on the peephole and the gun in his hand.

Jesse felt the crash coming on just before morning and lay on the bed, staring at the finished batches of what he wasn't totally sure was ricin in their Ziploc bags. His skin burned. It was so fucking hot that maybe the plastic would melt, the ricin would get in the air, he'd breathe it in and just die in his sleep. He didn't even care. Brock was alive. Jesse wouldn't be around to fuck Brock's life up anymore. Mr. White wouldn't have any reason to hurt people if Jesse wasn't around. 

Skyler and the kids might be happy on their desert island with a pile of money after Walt croaked.

It'd be okay.

He jolted awake at the pounding on the door. He stood on his toes and looked at the peephole, saw blonde, and put the gun to the door.

*

Skyler knocked on the door to room 12 and then looked around the motel parking lot. There was nobody, a few scattered cars, an abandoned cleaning cart. She knocked again, harder. If Jesse wasn't dead she might kill him herself.

There was movement inside the room, then a ragged shout. "What the fuck do you want?"

Jesse's voice chilled her. She leaned close, tried to speak firmly with a low voice. "It's me. It's Skyler. I wanted to check that you were okay. Can I come in?"

He looked closer through the peephole. "Who's with you?"

"Nobody. I'm alone. Let me in, Jesse, please."

Blasted eyes stared at her from a crack in the door before he reached out a shaking hand and pulled her inside. He dropped the gun on the bed and dragged a hand over his face.

"Jesus, you can't just, like, gimme a fucking _second_ alone to get this done?"

"It's been almost two days, and you wouldn't answer my calls. How long does this take?" Skyler looked around the darkened room, taking in the mess, the dishevelled bed, the bottles of chemicals covering every flat surface, dust mites dancing in narrow cracks of sunlight. Something had happened. She saw the collection of baggies, the fine off-white powder. "Is this it? Is it ready?"

Jesse lunged forward and knocked her hand away as she reached for the bags. "No! It's – don't touch it, you might – just – I don't know if it's right, okay? I don't know if it's gonna work. These aren't right, they're not gonna work, I did something wrong." He snatched the bags up and headed for the bathroom. "I'm gonna flush this shit and start again."

"Wait! Jesse, we need something – " Skyler reached him just as he was pulling the lever on the toilet, the baggies disappearing in a whirlpool down the drain. "You better hope that toilet doesn't get clogged. We don't need a dead maintenance person turning up."

"It's _fine_ ," he snarled. "That shit wouldn't work."

"How do you know that? It's not as though you can test it."

"Yeah. Exactly. I don't _know_." Jesse pushed past her, and she trailed after him back into the room. 

"What the hell has gotten into you? You said you could do this..." Skyler's gaze fell upon another set of baggies by the bed and the bright blue crystals made the words die in her throat. "Is – is this what I think it is?" 

She hesitated in picking them up, and he got there first again, scooping up the meth and shoving it in his pocket before she could get a good look at it.

"Mr. White didn't cook it, if that helps," he mumbled. "I dunno who did, but it ain't his."

"Why do you have it? Why are you..." she stopped again, and started to laugh. "Why the hell did I think I could trust a druggie burnout like you? Of course this is what happens. Jesus, what was I thinking?"

"I needed to try focusing, alright? I didn't think I could do it without – I needed – I didn't have him so I needed something."

"You needed him," Skyler echoed. "You did just fine pouring gasoline all over my house on your own, but now you need Walt."

Jesse's jaw was set, his eyes looking everywhere but at Skyler. He sniffed, dragged the sleeve of his hoodie across his nose. "I don't know if I know what I'm doing," he muttered.

"Do you think I do?" Skyler cried. Then hardened, commanding: "Look at me."

He glared at her, eyes as bright as what she'd seen in those baggies.

"Tell me now, tell me the truth," she said. "Do you want Walt dead?"

Jesse thought about it for a split second. "I want him to pay for what he's done. That's all I want. And if you hadn't stopped me – "

"Well I did. And now here we are. And there's nowhere else to go. He's gone to where he hid the money right now, and he's getting what we need to disappear. Time's up. If we don't do something now, he's going to get away with everything. If you want out of this, fine, but tell me now so I can take care of it myself."

"You're gonna kill him on your own? Do you have any idea what that's like? Killing somebody? Living with that for the rest of your life? Have you thought about that?"

"I've thought about it more than you know."

He stared at her with open mouthed incredulity. The ruthless steel in her eyes seemed to dull, and she looked away. 

"No," Jesse said. "You don't want this. He's a murderer and a drug dealer, but he's your fucking _husband_. You didn't even divorce his ass when you had the chance. You got back together with him and laundered his fucking drug money. You can't want to do this."

"No. I didn't want any of this. And now I just want it to be over, Jesse. We've gone so far down this road. I don't see another way. We have to follow through – or I have to follow through." Skyler teared up, smiled at him sadly. "You told me that you had a gun to his head. You never pulled the trigger. You found out he poisoned a child that you obviously care about, and you wanted to hurt him, but you didn't want to kill him. Do you really want to do this?"

Sharp-clawed rage roused inside him again, ripping at his heart. This time, he was his own target just as much as Walt. 

Skyler watched him, not daring to breathe. Jesse had a thousand-yard stare lost somewhere in the middle of the room.

"Yeah," he said into the void. "Yeah, I'm in."

Skyler's heart pounded, her lungs screamed for breath. She inhaled sharply, tried to nod. "Okay."

"Gimme a few hours and I'll think up some other way to do it. I don’t know if the ricin's gonna work."

"But... this was your idea – "

"If I do it, and it doesn't work and the son of a bitch pulls through and knows that we tried to kill him – do you wanna deal with that possibility? Like, at all? It's too risky. You might not be able to get something that looks like a natural death, but... I can make it like he just disappeared. You can come up with whatever story you need to tell your kid for that. Alright?" 

"Yeah. Yeah, okay." Skyler quickly swept fingers across her cheek, expecting tears, but they came away dry. "Give me the meth," she said.

Jesse huffed, dragged what was left of the teenths out of his pocket and laid them in her outstretched hand. She stared at it, split the seal on one of the bags, rolled the crystal between her fingers.

"On the street they call it Blue Sky," Jesse said. "Street names just kind of come up on their own, y'know, so you might get a few going around at once. When we were still kind of a small operation, when I was running the crew that was slinging this shit, Mr. White told me to try to solidify a brand, or whatever. He wanted me to push the name Blue Sky, try to make it stick."

Skyler looked up at Jesse, and he shrugged, half-smiled a sick smile. 

"I always wondered if he was trying to name it after you."

She grabbed him and yanked his arm up, slapped the drugs back into his hand. "If coming off this shit is going to stop you from thinking, keep it, but otherwise get rid of it. I do not have time for this." Her nails bit into the thin skin of his wrist. "Walt knows about the plane ticket. He might have Saul's people looking for any record of you getting a rental car. And when they have that... You should get rid of that car. I'll rent one here under my name. Then you come back to Albuquerque. This has to be done tonight."

Jesse pulled away from her and retreated to the bed, settling the blue back into its bag. "Get me the car and I'll meet you at that same truckstop at four o'clock. I'll give you the plan and we'll go from there."

"You'll think of something?"

"Yeah. I'll think of something."

They stared each other down from across the room, silently daring the other to change their mind, to back down one more time, to call a stay of execution for Walter White.

"Better get going," Jesse said finally.

"Better start thinking," Skyler answered.

*

She was minutes from home when she made a decision and pulled to the side of the road.

Willing herself to not be afraid, she found the number and dialled. Counted off the rings.

"Hello?" 

The answer was suspicious, unwelcoming.

"Marie," Skyler whispered. "Can I – I need to talk to you. Are you home?"

"Unless you've come to your senses and are bringing the kids with you and staying here, I don't think we have a lot to talk about," Marie said.

"Please. I will... I'm not ready, not yet, but – I need to talk to you. Just you. Not Hank. Not... not yet. Please."

Marie's voice changed, softened. "Yeah, Skyler, yes, I'll... I'm at home. Where are you?"

"Not far. Maybe ten minutes away."

"Come over, okay?"

"It's just you. Not Hank. Right?"

"Just me. I promise."

"Okay. I'll be there soon." Skyler swallowed around the lump in her throat. "Thank you."

She started the engine and merged back into traffic.


	8. Chapter 8

Another rental car, another aimless drive to nowhere. 

Jesse pulled off the side of a desolate road and waited to see if anyone was going to catch up to him. He tossed his brand new second burner in the air and caught it, over and over again. A shaky breath rushed out of him as he dialled Walt's number from memory.

The answer was quick and breathless.

"Yes?"

"Call off the dogs, Walt."

"Jesse?"

"I know you got people looking for me. I know one of them's a murdering psychopath. I mean, like, in addition to _you_ being a murdering psychopath."

"Jesse, all I have wanted to do is talk to you. That's all I wanted to do in the Plaza. You threatened me and I had to take steps – "

"Call 'em off. Just drop it, okay? I'm done running from you. I don't wanna talk to you. It's over."

"What? That's it? You're not upset about Brock anymore? Just like that?"

Walt sounded suspicious. Jesse instantly started to regret making the call. He closed his eyes and tried to lie as best as he could.

"Yeah. Just like that. Lucky you. One more thing you're gonna get away with."

"I did it because there was no other way. Gus had to go, and I _needed_ you to help protect my family – "

"Shut up, man. Just shut the fuck up. I don't care, okay? I don't care about you, and I don't care about your fucking family. If you ain't gonna drop this then at least quit being a little bitch and come get me yourself."

He snapped the phone closed and tossed it on the passenger seat, his forehead slamming into the steering wheel.

"Yeah," he muttered to himself. "That was a plan."

*

Marie didn't offer Skyler anything to drink. She barely said hello to her, just sat in her straight-backed purple zebra striped armchair while Skyler perched stiffly on the edge of the couch.

"Since I got off the phone with you, all I could think is why the hell I should even let you in this house if it's not to tell Hank everything you know," Marie said. "But I keep on forcing myself to remember that you are my sister. And I think about how you were so upset with Walt, and how you wanted the kids out of the house, and all of this makes me think that there has got to be hope for you. That whatever he did to you can be undone." 

Skyler couldn't look at her. She couldn't bring herself to say the words she'd come here to say, what she'd begged Marie to give her the chance to say. To admit that there was no way out now, that Skyler had Jesse Pinkman and there was no choice but to bring him in, for them both to surrender themselves to Hank, give him everything he needed on Walt. The truth would come out, her children would know, and Walt would likely die before he ever got to prison. All of it would be for nothing.

"You said you wanted to talk. So start talking," Marie snapped.

"Marie, he's – Walt's going to die. Soon."

"No. No, you're not giving me that shit again. How do you know he won't go back into remission this time? He looked pretty damn healthy lying his ass off on that tape. Jesus, Skyler, you gave me _drug money_ for Hank's treatment. What the hell were you thinking? Was it some other scheme of his? Of yours? To make sure Hank would be killing his career if he ever found out about this?"

"I was... trying to help the family..."

The line tasted terrible in her mouth. She wondered how Walt was able to spout the same bullshit over and over again.

"Help the family," Marie said flatly. She abruptly stood up and stalked down the hallway. "Stay there, I'm not done with you," she yelled over her shoulder.

Killing Walt would help the family. It would solve Hank's problem of having to take the case to his superiors and lose everything because of his involvement. It would keep the kids from finding out. Skyler rapidly built a pros and cons list in her head. She had to go through with it. She had to trust Jesse would find another way. 

Killing Walt would keep her out of prison. Her and Jesse. She was mad at him, furious, for trying to burn her house down, for getting high and failing to make the ricin... but she couldn't deny he'd been trying to help her. That Walt had damaged him in some way, that they were on the same side now. He wasn't that pot-dealing little thug she'd confronted in the driveway of his too-nice house. He had the capacity for genuine remorse, something she hadn't seen in Walt. 

She couldn't blame Jesse for struggling with the idea of killing Walt, changing his mind over and over again. Because here she was, changing her own mind again, ready to turn herself and Jesse into Hank's star witnesses.

Skyler was about to get up and sneak out the front door without Marie seeing, to go back to Jesse and help him think of something, some way to get Walt alone and far away, to make him just disappear. The click of Marie's heels on the tile stopped her, and a thick envelope she tossed in Skyler's lap held her down.

"What's this?" Skyler asked.

"This is how you've helped your family. This is what you've turned me into."

Skyler pulled a thick stack of paper from the envelope and began to page through it. There were Wikipedia articles, pages from various state health departments, the CDC, covered in yellow highlighter marks and Marie's curly handwriting in red ink in the margins. Saxitoxin, tetrodotoxin. Succinylcholine, potassium chloride. Hemlock. Lily of the Valley.

"Marie... what is this?"

"I spend all my time thinking about ways to kill Walt. There was one night I didn't sleep at all, I was just looking up untraceable poisons. Hank came out to find me in the kitchen with the computer at four in the morning, asking me why I hadn't been to bed. Usually it's the other way around."

"Hank knows about this?"

"No. God, no. He's got enough to deal with without thinking that I'm losing my mind. I told him I couldn't sleep. I said I'd been writing abusive, hate-filled letters to you that I was never going to send, just to get it out of my system."

"But... but you saved all this," Skyler said, flipping through the pages. "You printed these out and kept them and... you _annotated_ them. You were making a plan – "

"Jesus, Skyler, relax. I'm not going to do anything. This isn't me." Marie gestured to the stack of paper in Skyler's white-knuckled hands. "But... it feels so good to think about it. It scares me how good it feels. That's all it is. But even _that_ , you know... this isn't me, but it's what I've been doing."

Skyler kept looking. Oleander. Manchineel. Ricin.

_United States Patent Office_

_Preparation of Toxic Ricin_

"What is this one?" She held up the page for Marie.

Marie peered at it. "Oh, ricin," she said, as though Skyler were showing her a page from a catalogue. "Derived from the castor oil plant. Requires only a small amount to be effective. Presents like the flu, and by the time anyone realises it isn't, it's too late. There's no antidote. Death can occur within 36 to 72 hours after exposure, depending on the dose and delivery method." 

The clinical way she recited it all, as if it were memorized and catalogued in her head, as if these pages were completely useless because Marie knew it all already, made Skyler's blood turn cold.

Then Marie laughed humourlessly and waved her hand at the paper Skyler held. "Thing is, though, I'd need Walt to be able to decode all the chemistry there to even make the stuff. I'd need to _be_ Walt to even go through with it."

Skyler set her jaw and shuffled the pages, slipping the ricin patent to the front. She tucked the stack back in its envelope. This would get them so close. She couldn't turn herself in now. 

"I'm taking these with me. You shouldn't have them lying around the house. What would Hank say if he found this?"

"Oh, you're worried about Hank now?" Marie scoffed. "Great. That's great."

"I'm worried about _you_ , Marie."

"Prove it. Go get the kids. Get the three of you away from him. Tell Hank what he needs to know. Give me every copy of that obscenity you two made to discredit Hank, and we'll destroy them all together."

Skyler couldn't look her in the eye. "I need a few days. There's something I have to do. I promise you, it will be better for everyone if I... if I just have a few more days. Then I'll come to you and Hank. I promise." She stood and held the envelope against her chest, arm crossed over it like it was a shield. 

Marie stared up at her, her features hard, head minutely shaking. "You can see yourself out," she said quietly.

Skyler's eyes welled, and she turned and left before her sister could see.

She wound her way through Marie's neighbourhood, pulling over to park a few streets away. She dialled Jesse on the burner, held her breath while the other line rang.

"Yeah?" 

"Are you sober?"

His sigh crackled and distorted against her ear. "Jesus fucking Christ –"

"Answer me."

"Yeah. As much as being anywhere near you makes me wanna dive headfirst into a bowl, I restrained myself."

"Wonderful," Skyler said dryly. "I need you to tell me if you can understand this."

She slowly read the steps in the ricin production patent. The chemical abbreviations, the recurring actions. Words from Walt's language she'd never quite been able to speak, a way she could never connect to him.

He was silent when she finished. "Where'd you get that?"

"From my sister."

"You _told_ her? This is the sister married to Schrader, right? What the hell – "

"Yes, that's her, and no, I didn't tell her a thing. She... it's a long story. Just... do you have everything you need to follow this? Are you able to follow this?"

"Yeah. On both counts."

Skyler let out a breath and smiled to herself. She checked the mirrors, looked over her shoulder, surveying the houses around her, because _something_ had to go wrong here, it had to. 

There was nothing.

"Take everything you have and go to the truck stop now. I'll meet you there."

"So... we're going back to the old plan?"

"If you think you can do it."

"Yeah," Jesse growled. "I can do it."

The speedometer hovered on the wrong side of legal as Skyler drove back to the 40.

*

Another motel, another attempt at conspiracy to commit murder.

Jesse lined everything up on the chipped surface of the desk.

Metal curtain rings rattled as Skyler pulled the drapes closed. 

"This'll probably only take a couple hours, so it won't be worth it to drive home and back," Jesse said. "You could go back over to the truck stop, get some food, read a magazine or whatever. I'll call you when it's ready."

"No. I'm staying here." She pulled a plastic bag out of her purse. "I stopped at a hardware store on the way over and bought a mask."

"Seriously, you can go. I flushed the rest of the crystal. I'm not holding anything else. I'm gonna get this done."

"I believe you, Jesse. I want to see this. And... in spite of everything you have been trying to help me. It might have been unfair of me to put so much pressure on you and then just leave you on your own. This is so difficult, and we're – I feel like we're really all we've got now."

Jesse rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Look, I gotta tell you something. I – I started trying to put another plan into action. I got another burner, I called Walt. Trying to, like, draw him out again. I thought if he wanted to find me, he could trace the cell, find out where I am. I could use it to lure him out somewhere, then... then kill him. I told him I was done with him, I didn't care about what happened to Brock anymore, so... if he didn't wanna come after me, maybe he'd back off enough to buy you some time before he tried to take you guys out of town."

Skyler closed her eyes, fingers to her forehead. "So... you're telling me Walt could be able to find us now? He could be tracking your phone?"

"How fucking dumb do you think I am? I ditched that shit way outside of Gallup after you called me. Kept the battery in, just in case he did try it. It'd send him out looking for nothing. I just wanted you to have a heads up that maybe... I dunno, maybe I just made shit more difficult for you."

"Okay," she mouthed, mostly to herself.

Jesse turned back to setting up. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"No. No, that could've worked. And if nothing else, you might have bought us time. So..."

She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the mask over her head and let it hang loose at her throat.

The silence drew Jesse's attention, and he turned to look at her, quizzical eyebrows raised.

Skyler nodded at him. "Should we get started?"

*

Cloudy liquid dripped through the filter, leaving the poison behind. 

They'd barely spoken the entire time. Jesse didn't know what to say, but felt like he had to say something.

"It's not gonna be as easy as you think," he said, voice muffled by the dust mask. "Even if you get it into his food or whatever, you're gonna be going out of your mind waiting to see if he eats it. And doing that while trying not to let on something's up."

"You're speaking from experience?"

"Yeah. The first guy we tried using this on, no matter what we tried he didn't end up taking it." Jesse used his sleeve to wipe his brow, careful not to let his gloved hands touch his face. "And even if that all goes off fine, if he takes it and doesn't get it that something's up... watching him die... it won't happen fast. And when it's done, you won't be able to get it out of your head. It's probably worse, watching someone you killed die slowly."

Skyler was starting to feel airless and claustrophobic in the mask. She tried breathing evenly, counting in threes, in and out. 

"Who did you kill, Jesse?"

"Uh, this... this other chemist that Gus Fring had working for him. I almost did something that was probably gonna get me killed and Mr. White – Walter, I mean – he, um... intervened, I guess you'd say. And we were both in deep shit then, and Gus was gonna replace him with this other chemist, and probably kill both of us. So I had to... he asked me to go kill this guy, so then Gus'd have no choice but to keep us alive. So I did." Jesse shrugged. "It fucked me up for a while."

"Are you trying to talk me out of it? To talk yourself out of it again?"

He slowly turned in his chair. "No. I'm not. I'm just saying. It's not gonna be easy." 

They both returned to watching the drip, drip, drip from the filter.

"It was Gale Boetticher, wasn't it?"

Jesse snapped around to face her, double speed this time. "What?"

"You shot Gale Boetticher."

"How'd you know?"

"Hank talked about it when it happened. Thought Boetticher might have been Heisenberg, that the case was over. But Walt got drunk, and he more or less challenged Hank to come and find him. I read the news stories after that. What you just said, that it was another chemist working for Fring... I put it together."

Nodding slowly, Jesse turned back to his work.

Skyler continued, "After it happened, I asked Walt if the person who killed Boetticher would want to hurt him. He said no. I guess he was wrong about you."

"Shit kind of changed once I figured out how much he'd been dicking me over."

"By the sounds of things, you didn't want to kill Gale Boetticher. You did it because Walt told you to. Because you were trying to save yourself. Save the both of you. But here, you have a choice. We both do. We want this."

"I dunno who you're trying to convince right now."

"Yeah," Skyler sighed behind her mask. "Neither do I."

"It's gonna be hard," Jesse said. "But you'll figure out a way to live with it. Or you won't. But... you'll still be living, you know?"

She laughed dryly. "The future sounds bright."

*

Jesse sealed the baggie and took one last look at the instructions Skyler had given him.

"You know, this is pretty much the way I did it the first time."

"Well. I can understand if there was something blocking you. Reluctance to go through with it. You just needed something to push through that."

"Had to apply myself," Jesse mumbled. 

Skyler huffed. "Oh, God. The number of times I heard Walt say that about his students..." she trailed off, her tone shocking her, the hint of fondness there. The past tense. Like he was already dead, and they were telling familiar anecdotes about him at his funeral.

Jesse's lips quirked wryly as he pulled his mask off. "Yeah. I heard it a few times." 

Skyler pulled her mask off and turned it over in her hands. "So, it's ready?"

"It's ready." He double bagged it before handing it to her. "Just... you know, be careful how you give it to him. When you slip it in a drink or whatever... don't, like, inhale."

"Thanks," Skyler said dryly. "I'll remember that."

Gingerly, she tucked the baggie into her purse. 

"Call me, okay? When it starts to... like, when it's kicking in. When he gets sick. I want to know."

She nodded. "Thank you, Jesse. For your help. For not... for hearing me out, for not hurting my kids."

He turned back to the desk, started to clean up. "Nah. Don't thank me yet, Mrs. White."

Skyler stood by the door, waiting, hoping Jesse would turn back to her again, look her in the eye.

He didn't. He couldn't. So, quietly, she left.

*

The house was empty.

Skyler called out for Walt, for Junior, but only silence greeted her.

"Well," she said as she set Holly down in the playpen. "I guess this is it, baby girl."

After transferring the ricin from her purse to a pocket of her cardigan, she set about making dinner, hoping Walt would be home soon.

*

He was streaked with dirt. It wasn't as much as the last time, as the night he'd buried the money, but she could see the smudges on his face where he'd wiped his brow with dirty hands, the streaks on his clothes, the dark edges of his nails.

"Is Junior home?" Walt asked quickly, barely stepping into the house.

"No." Skyler sat on the couch, a glass of wine against her chest, the rest of the bottle waiting for her on the coffee table. "But he checked in with me, he'll be home for dinner."

Walt nodded, disappeared from the threshold, back outside. Skyler quickly stood, set her glass down, and made to follow him before he was back, hauling a black bag over his shoulder and kicking the door closed behind him.

"You got the money?"

"Some of it."

Skyler trailed after him as he went to their bedroom. Her mouth was dry, she had trouble swallowing. "What about the rest of it, Walt?"

"This is enough." The bag thumped to the ground. "Get Junior on the phone. Tell him to get back here now. We all need to be packed and ready to go before I make the call."

"Now? You want us to leave tonight?"

Walt jabbed an emphatic finger back down the hallway. "Go, Skyler. Get Junior. Now."

She ignored him and dropped to her knees beside the bag, easing the zipper open slowly, trying to think, trying to stall, making every second count. "How much is this?" she asked.

"About one point five million. After we pay Saul's guy, that should leave us with close to a million."

"Close to a million," she echoed.

Walt disappeared into the bathroom. She heard water from the shower drumming into the tub.

"Walt?"

He ignored her, pulling off his shoes and socks until she reached across him and turned off the faucet.

"Walt. What about the rest of it?"

"The _rest_ of it?" He was incredulous, forehead wrinkling as his eyebrows raised. "Is a million dollars suddenly not enough for you, Skyler?"

"It wasn't enough for you," she said softly. "The night you hid the money, you asked me to keep it after you were gone and not let everything you've done be for nothing. What is it for now, Walt? On top of everything that you've done – everything that _we_ have done – you're asking me and your son to abandon our lives and start over, while everything you worked for moulders away somewhere in the middle of the desert?"

He held up his hands to her, anger snapping in his eyes and his voice. "Enough, Skyler, just go and call Junior."

"No. No. Do you know where this man is going to move us to? What if it's some small town in the middle of nowhere where I can't find work? What am I supposed to do then, when you're dead and I'm unemployed and I have to put Junior through college and raise Holly? Have you thought about that? What happened to all those things you were promising me, trying to win me over? Italy and never working again and drinking wine in a fucking grotto? Do you expect me to be able to do that on what's left when you're gone? When you spend another six months or a year getting treatment and die anyway and we're back right where we started? With nothing?"

The pitch of her voice, the volume, the words, made Walt step back, dumbfounded. Skyler mentally gathered herself up again, and pushed harder.

"You ruined us, Walt, and now you're not providing for us. The _one thing_ you said you started this for. For the family. I know what was in that storage unit. If what you're leaving us with is whatever is still in that bag in however many months' time... what was the goddamn point?" She took a step closer, closing the distance between them again. "I am not going with you, I am not allowing you to take the children with you, until you tell me where the money is. Until I can go there myself and bring back what we need."

His lip curled in a snarl, his jaw tightened. He stepped around her, pulled his wallet from his jacket, thumbed through it.

"Here." 

Walt tossed a small scrap of paper at her and she fumbled to catch it as it fluttered against her chest. A lottery ticket. He stabbed the air above it with his index finger.

"Those numbers are GPS coordinates. The money is in seven barrels, buried at that location. If you suddenly give _that_ much of a damn about having the money, then go. Take a shovel." Walt turned away from her, apparently given up on the idea of taking a shower, hauling a suitcase from the closet instead. "I'll talk to Junior, get him ready to go. I'll make the call."

"And leave you alone with the kids to disappear before I can get back?" Skyler shook her head, a disbelieving laugh escaping her mouth. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"Your call, Skyler. Either way, we leave tonight."

"What's so important about going now? What's changed that this can't wait until morning?"

She waited to see if he'd tell her. His shoulders slumped, his chest inflated with a deep breath. When he looked at her, he was fighting to hold his anger back. She waited to see if he'd break, if this was it, if he was finally going to hurt her to keep her quiet.

When he spoke, his voice was deliberately measured. 

"Pinkman called me. Telling me to back off, that he knew I was looking for him. He said he was done. That this was over."

"Isn't that what you've been waiting for?"

"He wouldn't just drop it suddenly unless he was planning something. He's trying to catch me off guard, but he's given himself away. He's making mistakes, he's even more unpredictable. I think he might be using drugs again. I – I don't know what he's going to do, and I want all of us away from here, somewhere safe, before he does it. Or before I have to do something I don't want to do."

"Pinkman. The kid who sat at our table blathering about microwave lasagna. Who came to burn our house down and then, for whatever reason, didn't go through with it. Who you said has never hurt anyone. That's who you're afraid of? He finally comes out of the woodwork and you still won't deal with him? I don't understand what's happening here – "

"No, you don't, Skyler, so you need to listen and trust me that I know what I'm doing."

"For once, please, answer me honestly, Walt. Is Jesse Pinkman going to come after us?"

Walt looked her in the eye, his anger fading. "No," he said firmly. "But I've never gone this long having a falling out with him, and it's starting to concern me. The only way to guarantee we're all safe is to leave – "

He was cut off by the sound of the front door slamming. They both jumped, wide eyed gazes toward the hallway, when Junior called out, "Mom? Dad? I'm home."

"Hey, honey," Skyler called back. She dropped her voice, hissed at Walt. "Tomorrow. We'll go together to get the money tomorrow. That's the only thing I'm asking. Then me and the kids will run away from your problems wherever the hell you want." She looked him over, the dirt on his face. "Get cleaned up. Then go spend time with your son. You're going to have to explain this to him when we leave."

As she walked away from him, she put the lottery ticket in her pocket, and checked that the ricin was still there.

*

Three plates, clean and white, each one waiting for a perfectly portioned heap of spaghetti. Skyler's heart was in her throat, pulse booming in her ears, echoing in her skull, as she stirred the sauce. 

Walt and Junior's conversation filtered in from the table, a low buzz behind the roar in her head.

"Mrs. Geist asked about you the other day."

"Really? Well, that's nice of her. Tell her I said hello."

She wasn't sure when the best time to add the poison would be. What if Walt caught her? What if, in a moment of blind panic, she forgot which plate she'd dosed and ended up serving it to Junior instead? She tucked one hand into her pocket, thinking.

"She, um... I told her that you were sick again, and about what happened at the gas station – "

"Son, really, you shouldn't be – "

"But she – she sounded worried about you, and today she gave me this to give to you."

The silence caught Skyler's attention. Walt was frowning at a small bottle.

"Homeopathic nasal spray? Really? The woman's a biology teacher, she has to know these things are ridiculous."

Junior continued, in spite of his father's dismissal. "She said it's good to use when something like that happens, it can help you breathe better. It could help with your cough too. And – and it's supposed to be an anti-stress thing, and helps your immune system, so that's gotta be good, right?"

Walt huffed. "I have cancer, not a sinus infection. Jesus, what has happened at that school? You know, I always thought she was not at all competent – "

"Walt," Skyler interrupted sharply off Junior's injured expression. "It can't hurt, right? Flynn's just worried about you." She gave him a look that she hoped was gently needling, not letting any of her desperation slip.

He sighed, eyes closing to hide their skyward roll. He set the bottle by his placemat and smiled stiffly at Junior. "Right. Can't hurt. Thank you. And tell Mrs. Geist thank you." 

Skyler turned back to the food, portioning out the noodles, spooning the sauce on top. Her fingers flexed around the baggie in her pocket, briefly, but she withdrew her hand and wiped her sweaty palm along her hip. 

"It's ready."

She picked up two plates to carry to the table, and served her husband and son.

*

With Junior and Walt doing the dishes, she palmed the spray bottle from where Walt had abandoned it on the table and headed back to the bathroom.

Behind the locked door, she unscrewed the cap and fumbled with rubber cleaning gloves from under the sink. Her fingers felt fat, uncoordinated, and she flexed her hands a few time before she filled her lungs with one last shaky breath.

She held it in and split the Ziploc seal. Slowly, she lined up the lip of the baggie with the mouth of the bottle, gently shook the powder out. Her lungs burned, she held it over the drain of the sink, just in case she spilled it, but she was so slow, so careful, that she didn't see a speck of the poison wasted.

Skyler set the bottle down, turned her head to exhale into her shoulder, and screwed the cap of the bottle back on with empty lungs and rubber fingers. She shook the bottle gently, agitated the spray into a whirlpool around the powder. She dared to breathe again as she held it up to the light and couldn't see anything out of place.

The empty baggie was wrapped up with the rubber gloves, shoved in her tampon box and makeup bag hiding place. She'd take it out, later, when there was time, toss it in a dumpster somewhere on the other side of town, far away from her, far away from Jesse.

She rinsed out the sink, washed her hands, and set the bottle down by Walt's toothbrush.

Back in the kitchen, Junior was drying dishes while Walt sat with Holly on the couch.

"I can finish up, sweetie. I'm sure you've got homework to do."

"Nah, I'm almost done." Junior glanced over at the table. "Where'd Dad's spray go?"

"I put it in the bathroom where he'd see it." She gently patted his arm. "Don't worry, I'll make sure he uses it before he goes to bed."

*

"So, tomorrow?"

Skyler sat on the end of the bed, watching Walt through the bathroom doorway, the lottery ticket clasped tightly in her hands.

Walt sighed, heavy with condescension, as he rinsed out his toothbrush. "Yes. We'll go together tomorrow to get more of the money, and then we're leaving."

"Use the nasal spray Junior gave you."

"Skyler – "

"Use it. He's going to ask if you have, and it'd be nice if you didn't have to lie to him for once." Skyler stood, slammed the lottery ticket down on her bedside table with the flat of her palm. "The kids and I are running away with you, Walt. I'm doing what you want. Just humour me this one last thing."

He made a production of it, inhaling deep draws through each nostril. Arms spread wide, he shook his head at Skyler. "Happy?"

"Thank you."

She slid under the covers and switched off her lamp. Eyes closed, she spent hours listening to try to hear Walt's breathing change.

*

Jesse jerked awake with clenched teeth and balled fists and by the time he looked around the motel room in the flickering light from the TV and figured out where he was, he couldn't remember what, exactly, it was in his dream that made him so angry.

Filling his lungs with deep, thirsty gulps, he grabbed his phone to look at the time. 3:52, and he had multiple texts from Skyler.

_done_

_these are gps coordinates. be there in morning_

_34 59 20 106 36 52_

Jesse closed the phone and flipped it over in his hand, bottom lip caught between his teeth. 

That hadn't been part of the plan.

He dropped the phone on the floor and slumped back against the pillows, staring blankly at the TV until he forced his eyes closed.

*

The silence in the car was so deep and unrelenting that when Walt coughed against the back of his hand, it sounded like the crack of gunfire.

Skyler stared out the window and kept her breathing steady.  
 


End file.
